Covid-19 Pandemic and Capital Structure: Evidence from West Africa

Abstract

The question of whether the Covid-19 pandemic is a predictor of firms’ capital structure has remained unanswered following limited empirical studies. The financial structure of every business is its lifeblood which is the most important decision-making at any stage of the business’s operation. This study investigated the effect of covid-19 on the capital structure of non-financial firms listed on the Ghana stock exchange (GSE). The study focused on long-term debt, short-term debt and total debt ratios as a measure of capital structure. The study adopted the ex-post facto research design, the population consisted of 23 listed non-financial firms out of which 21 were sampled. Data was sourced from audited annual financial reports of the selected companies. Panel regression and ANOVA were used to analyze the data. The findings of the study revealed that covid-19 pandemic showed an insignificant effect on capital structure measured as long-term debt. This implies that the pandemic did not cause significant volatility to the long-term debt of non-financial firms in Ghana within the period of the study. Furthermore, the covid-19 pandemic showed no significant effect on short-term debt. This indicates that short-term borrowings for non-financial firms listed on GSE were not significantly affected by the covid-19 pandemic. The findings of the study further revealed that the covid-19 pandemic does not have a significant effect on the total debt of listed non-financial companies in Ghana. The study recommends that the capital structure policy of non-financial firms listed on the Ghana Stock Exchange should be maintained. This is because the study revealed that the severity of the covid-19 pandemic on business operations did not significantly affect the capital structure of the firms as measured by long-term debt, short-term and total debt.