Analysis of success-dependent factors for green bond financing of infrastructure projects in Ghana

ABSTRACT

Globally, green bonds have experienced a fair share of handicaps within the countries of issuance. In lieu of Ghana announcing the possibility of its first green bonds, it is crucial that lessons are taken from the past developments to reinforce the prospects of a salutary rollout. This paper explores factors recommended as success dependent in the Ghanaian markets. A quantitative approach is employed. Twelve factors are extracted from a review of the available literature and converted into a questionnaire targeted at professionals in financial institutions. This included managers and financial analysts, as well as top management personnel. In total, 54 questionnaires were distributed. A total of 32 responses were received, proportional to a response rate of 60.37% and was analyzed with relative importance index and one-sample t-test. The results indicate that ‘Good Credit Ratings, Provision of Local Guidelines, Proper Green Qualifications Criteria, and Prioritizing Viable Projects’ are highest ranked factors. It is important that these are incorporated in the framework to be designed for the rollout of green bonds in the Ghana. Considerations should also be made with respect to the culture and state of the financial markets in the country while bringing out the appropriate structure to facilitate the issuances.

KEYWORDS:

• Green bonds
• challenges
• success factors
• infrastructure projects
• Ghana

Acknowledgements

We thank Mr. Caleb Debrah and Mr. Prince Antwi-Afari for their insightful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. We also thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).