The interest that banks pay to demand depositors has increased from 2.80 percent in second quarter to 2.88 percent in third quarter, representing a marginal increase of 2.86 percent, according to latest data released by the Bank of Ghana.
Demand deposits rate has been maintained at an average of 2.8 percent since August last year through to the beginning part of this year until July 2020 where it rose to an average of 2.88 percent.
Although demand deposit rates increase marginally within the period, the data indicates that it still attracted the lowest rate among all deposit rates including those bound by time.
Time deposit rates for 3 months have remained unchanged at 11.5 percent from the beginning of the year whereas 6 months’ time deposit rates decreased from a monthly average of 10.5 percent in the second quarter to an average of 10 percent depicting a sudden decline of 5 percent in the third quarter.
The Bank of Ghana’s summary of financial and economic data gives further indication that the monetary policy rate, although it was initially 16 percent, has been reduced to 14.5 percent and remained there since March. More so, the monetary policy rate is higher than the interbank weighted average rate which has been steadily declining monthly since the start of the second quarter and stood at an average of 13.63 percent by August which was lower compared to the Ghana reference rate of 14.74 percent.
The data also gave some insight into the treasury instruments and the secondary market.
About the treasury instruments, except for the 91-Day bill which reduced from 13.97 percent at the end of the second quarter to 13.95 percent before rising to 14.02 percent, the 182 and 364 – Day bill remained the same from the end of the second quarter to the start of the third quarter at 14.05 percent and 16.87 percent respectively and then rose to 14.09 percent and 16.89 percent correspondingly. The 2-year note similarly maintained a fairly stable rate of 18.75 percent as well and then fell to 18.25 percent in August. The 3- and 5-year bonds both remained at 18.85 percent and 19.25 respectively from June.
