One Ghanaian bank advertises 13.70% and charges 23.42%
Bank of Ghana requires every bank to report what its loans actually cost, fees included. Set those figures against what the banks advertise and the gap reaches 9.72 percentage points.
Bank of Ghana requires every bank to report the annual percentage rate on its lending — the rate a borrower actually pays once fees, commissions and charges are included. It publishes the results.
Most Ghanaian borrowers never see them. What they see is the rate on the poster, in the branch, on the website.
Those are not the same number.
The gap
Bank of Africa's one-year SME loan is reported to the regulator at a minimum of 13.70% and a maximum of 23.42%.
| Rate | |
|---|---|
| Advertised, minimum | 13.70% |
| What it can cost | 23.42% |
| The gap | 9.72 points |
The lower figure is real — some borrowers get it. But a business owner reading 13.70% and budgeting on it may find the loan costs almost twice that, and nothing on the way in tells them which end of the range they are at.
That gap is fees. The interest rate is one component; arrangement fees, commitment fees, processing charges and insurance make up the rest, and the APR is the only figure that captures all of it.
What SME credit costs across the market
Twenty-two banks report. For a one-year SME loan in May 2026:
| Bank | APR |
|---|---|
| Standard Chartered | 11.03% |
| Ecobank Ghana | 13.01% |
| First Atlantic Bank | 13.51% |
| Bank of Africa | 13.70% |
| ... | |
| GCB Bank | 27.54% |
| Guaranty Trust Bank | 33.58% |
The cheapest and the dearest are 22.55 percentage points apart, for the same product, in the same market, in the same month.
On a GH₵100,000 loan over one year that is roughly GH₵22,550 — the difference between a bank that lends and one that is barely worth borrowing from.
Only three of twenty-four mention a rate anywhere
We checked the websites of every bank we track. Three mention a rate. The rest publish product descriptions, eligibility criteria and application forms, with no figure at all.
That is not a regulatory failure — Bank of Ghana collects and publishes the data. It is a disclosure gap between the regulator's publication, which few borrowers read, and the bank's own material, which they all do.
What a borrower can do about it
Ask for the APR, not the interest rate. It is the figure the bank already calculates and reports to the regulator every month, so it exists and can be quoted.
Ask which end of the range you fall in, and why. A bank reporting 13.70% to 23.42% knows where a given applicant sits before it lends.
And compare before applying. The difference between the cheapest and dearest one-year SME loan in Ghana is larger than the entire cost of borrowing from the cheapest.
Know when the numbers change
When the numbers move, what moved and where it came from. Treasury bill rates, bank lending costs, fund charges, inflation, and who is on the regulators’ registers — taken from Bank of Ghana, the Ghana Stock Exchange, the Statistical Service and the Securities and Exchange Commission as they publish. No schedule, because the institutions do not keep one either.
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Where these figures come from
- Bank of Ghana — Annual Percentage Rates and Average Interest Rates
- May 2026
- Bank of Ghana — APR reports September 2024
- March 2025
- June 2025
- Bank websites
- checked August 2026
If a figure here is wrong or out of date, tell us and we will correct it, cited and dated.