Ghana Heritage Fund

The fund was established by Ghana's Petroleum Revenue Management Act, 2011 (Act 815). Its mandate is to receive a statutory share of petroleum revenues and invest them for the benefit of future generations of Ghanaians. The principal cannot be spent until Ghana's petroleum reserves are depleted or fall below a threshold set in the Act. This makes it fundamentally an endowment vehicle, unlike the Ghana Stabilisation Fund which exists to smooth annual budget shortfalls.

The Minister of Finance carries ultimate fiduciary responsibility and is advised by a statutory Investment Advisory Committee. The committee's composition is defined in the Petroleum Revenue Management Act and includes representatives with financial-market expertise. Day-to-day portfolio management is outsourced to external investment managers selected through a competitive process overseen by the Ministry and the Bank of Ghana.

The fund is legally required to invest all assets outside Ghana. Permitted asset classes include sovereign bonds of creditworthy foreign governments, investment-grade corporate bonds, money-market instruments, and global public equities. Real estate and alternative assets are not explicitly prohibited but have not historically formed part of the disclosed portfolio, which remains heavily tilted toward fixed income.

Both are sub-funds of the Ghana Petroleum Funds created by Act 815, but they serve different purposes. The Stabilisation Fund is designed to absorb oil-revenue volatility and can be drawn down during years when petroleum receipts fall below budget projections. The Heritage Fund is an endowment: its capital is locked for the long term, and only a limited amount of investment income may be transferred to the budget under specific conditions. The Heritage Fund invests entirely abroad; the Stabilisation Fund may hold domestic instruments.

Capital comes from Ghana's petroleum revenues, which flow from oil-producing fields — principally the Jubilee and TEN fields — through the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) into a single Petroleum Holding Account at the Bank of Ghana. The Bank then allocates funds to the Heritage Fund, the Stabilisation Fund, and the national budget according to a statutory formula defined in the Petroleum Revenue Management Act.

Ghana publishes aggregate petroleum-fund data through the Ministry of Finance and the Public Interest and Accountability Committee, but the Heritage Fund's standalone portfolio holdings are not typically disaggregated. The fund's IFSWF membership requires adherence to the Santiago Principles, which call for regular public disclosures on asset allocation and performance. In practice, detailed manager-by-manager or position-level reporting is not the norm.

No. The Ghana Heritage Fund is a public sovereign wealth vehicle capitalized exclusively by Ghanaian petroleum revenues. It does not raise capital from external limited partners and does not structure co-investment vehicles or private funds for outside investors.