BY Daniel Bampoe
Member of Parliament for Tano North, Dr Gideon Boako, has questioned claims surrounding GoldBod’s reported contribution of about $1.1 billion to Ghana’s foreign exchange reserves, arguing that the amount should not be presented as an entirely new addition to the country’s reserves.
In a statement, Dr Boako said the reported support must be understood in the context of GoldBod’s previous financial obligations to the Bank of Ghana (BoG).
According to him, GoldBod owed the central bank approximately GH¢3.7 billion in 2025 in respect of gold supplies that had not been delivered.
He explained that the Bank of Ghana had advanced cedis to GoldBod to purchase gold on behalf of the central bank, but GoldBod was unable to deliver the gold for several months.
Dr Boako therefore argued that the $1.8 billion referenced in the latest arrangement, of which about $1.1 billion is being treated as an addition to reserves, could partly represent the settlement or fulfilment of an existing obligation to the Bank of Ghana rather than an entirely fresh injection into reserves.
“This ought to be clarified,” he said.
The MP also raised questions about the funding structure of GoldBod’s gold purchases following the central bank’s decision to exit the gold-purchasing funding scheme.
He argued that under the current arrangement, gold purchased with funds obtained from commercial banks would ultimately have to be linked to those banks through foreign exchange transactions.
Similarly, he said, gold purchased with funds provided by off-takers would have to be returned to the off-takers.
According to Dr Boako, this would make it difficult for funds sourced from commercial banks or other private parties to simultaneously be used to purchase gold and generate dollar proceeds that are then counted as an increase in the Bank of the reserves.
He maintained that such a reserve-building mechanism would only be possible where the funds used to purchase the gold originated from the Ministry of Finance or from debt instruments issued by GoldBod.
Dr Boako said GoldBod, to his knowledge, had not yet raised any debt instrument, while there was an indication of a GH¢5 billion commitment from the Ministry of Finance to support GoldBod’s gold purchases.
He subsequently posed a number of questions about the source and utilisation of GoldBod’s purchasing funds.
“Can GoldBod tell us the source of funding for its purchases?” he asked, while also questioning how much of the reported GH¢5 billion commitment from the Ministry of Finance had so far been utilised.
He further questioned whether the Bank of Ghana could still be providing funding to GoldBod despite the earlier position that the central bank would exit the gold-purchasing funding arrangement effective July 1, 2026.
Dr Boako also raised concerns about the implications if GoldBod’s purchases were being financed by commercial banks.
He argued that commercial banks would be entitled to receive the full dollar value corresponding to the cedis they had provided for the gold purchases.
“How do you take X amount in cedis from commercial banks to buy gold, convert it into dollars, and then give the banks the dollar equivalent of less than what you took from them and give the remainder to BoG to shore up reserves?” he asked.
Dr Boako said the structure of the arrangement would ultimately have to be examined through the financial records to determine how the reported reserve accumulation had been generated.
Quoting a Ghanaian proverb, he concluded: “The length of the toad is known after death.”
He added that the full implications of the GoldBod arrangement would become clearer when the books were eventually examined in detail.
