BY DANIEL BAMPOE
A fierce political battle has erupted over the finances and operations of the Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod), with former Minister of State for Finance and Atiwa East MP Abena Osei-Asare questioning billions of cedis associated with the state gold-trading system while GoldBod Chief Executive Officer Sammy Gyamfi has hit back, accusing her of confusing the institution’s accounts with losses recorded under a separate Bank of Ghana programme.
The controversy, rekindled by the 2026 Mid-Year Budget Review, has opened another front in the political debate over the Mahama administration’s flagship gold policy, with the two sides offering sharply different interpretations of the financial risks, public funding and economic benefits associated with the programme.
While Osei-Asare is demanding greater transparency over funds committed to GoldBod and the losses associated with the state’s domestic gold operations, Sammy Gyamfi insists the opposition MP is wrongly attributing Bank of Ghana losses to an institution whose audited accounts, he says, instead recorded a substantial operational surplus.
The exchanges come just as Finance Minister Dr. Cassiel Ato Forson has presented GoldBod as one of the major drivers of the improved external position, claiming reforms to the gold trade helped generate an additional US$15 billion in foreign exchange inflows.
Red Flag
Abena Osei-Asare, who chairs Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee, raised questions about the amount of public resources committed to GoldBod while discussing the Mid-Year Budget Review.
She argued that an institution established partly to generate additional foreign exchange and revenue for Ghana should not simultaneously expose the state or central bank to substantial financial losses.
“Check the issues at Gold Board because it is worrying that in a year we have had to spend about US$1.2 billion in an institution that we believe should be able to raise more money for the government than government or Bank of Ghana making losses on their behalf,” she stated.
Central to the controversy is a reported US$214 million, or approximately GH¢9.6 billion, trading shortfall associated with the domestic gold operations and referenced in discussions surrounding an IMF assessment.
Abena Osei-Asare has questioned the financial architecture under which GoldBod purchases and aggregates gold and the Bank of Ghana ultimately assumes foreign exchange exposure.
Her argument is that simply separating GoldBod’s books from those of the central bank does not eliminate the wider financial risk to the state if losses arising from the overall gold-purchasing framework eventually appear on the Bank of Ghana’s balance sheet.
The Atiwa East MP has consequently demanded greater disclosure of GoldBod’s finances and the financial relationship among the Gold Board, Ministry of Finance and Bank of Ghana.
Sammy Gyamfi Fires Back
But Sammy Gyamfi has strongly rejected attempts to place the reported losses at GoldBod’s doorstep.
Speaking on Joy FM’s Morning Show on Friday, July 24, the GoldBod CEO argued that Osei-Asare’s criticism demonstrated a misunderstanding of the distinction between GoldBod’s operations and the Bank of Ghana’s Domestic Gold Purchase Programme.
“Bank of Ghana made a loss under the Domestic Gold Purchase Programme. That programme is Bank of Ghana’s programme,” Gyamfi maintained.
According to him, losses incurred by the central bank under that programme cannot automatically be classified as losses incurred by GoldBod.
He further argued that the Bank of Ghana had already recorded substantial losses from its domestic gold operations before GoldBod became operational, citing a GH¢6 billion loss in 2024 contained in the central bank’s audited financial statements.
For Sammi Gyamfi, that historical record undermines attempts to blame GoldBod for the central bank’s subsequent losses.
Sammy Gyamfi challenged Osei-Asare and other critics to subject GoldBod’s audited financial statements to scrutiny and identify any evidence of financial impropriety.
“She should pick our audited financial statements and show us one piece of evidence of siphoning public funds or misappropriation of public funds,” he challenged.
According to the GoldBod CEO, the institution’s 2025 accounts were audited and published by the Auditor-General without an adverse finding against its management.
He said GoldBod generated an operational surplus of GH¢909 million from its activities in 2025.
“We declared an operational surplus of GH¢909 million from our internally generated funds,” he said.
Sammy Gyamfi further stated that when government revenue associated with its operations was added, GoldBod recorded an overall surplus of approximately GH¢5.4 billion.
The figures have become central to GoldBod’s defence against opposition claims that the institution has become a drain on public finances.
GH¢4.5bn Seed Capital Sparks Another Fight
Another area of disagreement concerns the GH¢4.5 billion provided by government to GoldBod.Abena Osei-Asare’s criticism has focused partly on the level of state resources channelled into the institution, but Sammy Gyamfi maintains that the money was neither an emergency bailout nor an expenditure secretly incurred outside parliamentary approval.
He said the GH¢4.5 billion was specifically provided for in the 2025 Budget as revolving seed capital for GoldBod’s trading activities.
“Check the 2025 Budget Statement of government. In that budget, the Ministry of Finance provided a revolving seed capital for the Ghana Gold Board in the amount of GH¢4.5 billion,” he said.
According to him, the funds were not released until December 30 or 31, 2025, meaning GoldBod had operated for much of the year without receiving the government seed capital.
“The Ministry of Finance was obliged to release that money to the GoldBod, a newly established public corporation, to serve as revolving seed capital for our trade operations,” he explained.
He therefore rejected suggestions that the release constituted evidence that GoldBod was consuming taxpayers’ money to cover operational losses.
“How is that evidence of GoldBod siphoning public funds?” he questioned.
BoG Losses Become Political Weapon
At the centre of the increasingly heated dispute is a broader question that goes beyond whether GoldBod itself recorded a surplus: who ultimately carries the financial risks associated with Ghana’s state-backed gold purchases?
Abena Osei-Asare and other opposition figures have focused attention on losses appearing on the Bank of Ghana’s books and are questioning whether the structure allows GoldBod to record positive margins while foreign exchange risks are absorbed elsewhere within the public sector.
Abena Asare’s counterargument is that the central bank’s programme has its own mandate, financial structure and accounts and should therefore not be conflated with GoldBod’s trading results.
The dispute has consequently developed into a battle over accounting as much as politics.The Minority’s position effectively requires government to explain the consolidated financial impact of the entire gold-purchasing arrangement—not merely whether GoldBod independently recorded a surplus.
GoldBod, on the other hand, maintains that critics must assess individual public institutions based on their respective audited financial statements rather than combining separate programmes to manufacture losses against the Board.
Ato Forson Touts $15bn Gold Windfall
The controversy erupted just as Finance Minister Dr. Ato Forson was presenting the government’s gold strategy as a major economic success.
During the Mid-Year Budget Review on Thursday, he told Parliament that reforms spearheaded through GoldBod helped Ghana generate an additional US$15 billion in foreign exchange inflows from gold.
According to Dr. Forson, the intervention helped formalise sections of the gold trade, curb smuggling, strengthen foreign exchange reserves and support stability of the Ghana cedi.
The Finance Minister further linked the gold reforms to Ghana’s improved current account position.The country’s current account surplus reportedly increased from 1.9 percent of GDP in 2024 to 8.3 percent in 2025, representing an improvement of 6.4 percentage points.
“This single policy measure improved Ghana’s current account balance by 6.4 percentage points. It represents a fourfold increase in the current account surplus in just one calendar year,” Dr. Forson told Parliament.
Government therefore sees GoldBod not merely as a gold-buying agency but as part of a broader strategy to increase foreign exchange availability, build reserves and stabilise the currency.
