Pensioners To Resume Picketing At Finance Ministry Over Delayed Coupon Payments

The Pensioner Bondholders Forum will return to the Finance Ministry today, Friday April 28, 2023, to demand that matured coupons and principals of their bonds are paid. The government has failed to meet its obligations to pensioner bondholders who were exempted from the Domestic Debt Exchange Programme (DDEP) and to individual bondholders who did not participate in the scheme.

Since February 2023, principals and coupons on 22 bond issuances totalling over GH¢1 billion have been outstanding. Pensioner bondholders who picketed at the Finance Ministry for two weeks to demand an exemption from the debt exchange scheme have stated that if payments are not made immediately, they will resort to the same action.

We were promised to be paid, as and when it is due. But now here we are, coupons are overdue. Some of them including the principals are well overdue for more than two months. All that have not been paid and that is what we are facing. That is the saddening situation we are facing. This is where we have said that, if government does not pay us by today, pensioners will resume their picketing at the Ministry of Finance.

The forum in an earlier statement expressed disappointment over the government’s inconsistency regarding assurances to pay all pensioners their outstanding coupons and principals of bond investments. The Convener of the Forum expressed the pain and financial hardships members have had to go through as a result of the delay and requested that the payments be made as demanded in the Forum’s letter of March 30, 2023, to the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta.