By Daniel Bampoe
The controversy surrounding the gold-for-reserves programme has taken a sharper political turn, with the Minority in Parliament accusing Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod) Chief Executive Officer Sammy Gyamfi of attempting to distance the institution from losses recorded under the Domestic Gold Purchase Programme (DGPP) while retaining credit for the programme’s gains.
In a strongly worded response issued on Thursday, August 20, 2026, Minority Leader Alexander Afenyo-Markin rejected Gyamfi’s defence of GoldBod’s financial performance and argued that the central issue is not simply which institution recorded the loss on its books, but whether GoldBod’s activities, fees and gold-sourcing arrangements contributed to the financial exposure incurred by the Bank of Ghana.
The Minority’s response followed Gyamfi’s appearance at the Government Accountability Series on Wednesday, August 19, where he dismissed allegations that GoldBod itself had suffered a GH¢22 billion loss. The IMF reported the loss of $1.7billion during gold trading by GoldBod.
The latest statement, titled “GoldBod Cannot Pocket the Fees, Claim the Credit and Disclaim the Losses,” argues that Gyamfi’s response failed to adequately address the financial implications of the programme.
According to the Minority, Gyamfi did not dispute the IMF’s finding that the Bank of Ghana recorded losses of more than US$1.7 billion, equivalent to approximately GH¢22 billion or 1.5% of GDP, from the DGPP in 2025.
The disagreement, the Minority says, is therefore not about whether the loss occurred but about who should be held accountable for the circumstances that produced it.
The Caucus maintains that the fact that the loss was recorded on the Bank of Ghana’s balance sheet does not automatically absolve GoldBod or other institutions involved in the programme.
“The Bank booked the loss because it financed, owned, and accounted for the programme. The issue is whether GoldBod’s sourcing and charges contributed. The IMF says they did,” the Minority stated.
That position challenges GoldBod’s repeated argument that the US$1.7 billion figure should not be described as a GoldBod loss because it relates specifically to the Bank of Ghana’s DGPP operations.
The Minority has also taken issue with Gyamfi’s description of GoldBod’s audited accounts.
According to the Caucus, the Auditor-General did not prepare GoldBod’s financial statements, as Gyamfi is alleged to have suggested.
The statement points to the audit report’s description of management’s responsibilities, arguing that GoldBod’s Board was responsible for preparing and fairly presenting the financial statements and maintaining the relevant internal controls.
It further states that Sammy Gyamfi himself approved and signed the statements on April 28, 2026, while the Auditor-General’s role was to audit those statements and provide reasonable assurance on whether they were materially fairly presented.
The Minority therefore cautions against treating the Auditor-General’s unmodified audit opinion as a declaration that GoldBod’s operations were economically efficient or that the institution could not have contributed to losses elsewhere in the broader programme.
A significant part of the Minority’s argument centres on GoldBod’s reported GH¢5.44 billion surplus. The Caucus says the headline figure does not, on its own, demonstrate that GoldBod generated GH¢5.44 billion from its trading operations.
According to the figures cited in the Minority’s statement, GoldBod’s accounts contained approximately GH¢970.77 million in non-tax revenue, GH¢35.34 million in finance income and GH¢4.5477 billion in grants, against expenditure of about GH¢109.59 million.
The Minority therefore argues that roughly 84% of the reported surplus came from a government grant rather than the institution’s operating activities.
The Caucus further highlights a distinction between describing government funding as “revolving seed capital” or “equity” and recording it as grant revenue in the financial statements.
Its argument is that taxpayers’ money transferred to GoldBod cannot simply be treated as evidence of commercial profitability.
The Minority has also drawn attention to two specific revenue lines in GoldBod’s accounts. It says the accounts recorded GH¢337.43 million in assay fees and GH¢558.14 million in Bank of Ghana service charges, giving a combined figure of approximately GH¢895.57 million.
According to the Caucus, that amount is almost equivalent to GoldBod’s operational surplus after government grants are excluded.
The Minority’s argument is not necessarily that the fees were unlawful. Rather, it wants the public to distinguish between revenue earned by GoldBod and the overall economic performance of the public gold-purchasing programme.
The Caucus says that fees received by GoldBod represented costs to the programme and therefore formed part of the financial burden ultimately borne by the principal institution.
According to the statement, the IMF identified three major components associated with the losses: service and assay fees paid to GoldBod, discounts on gold sold to off-takers and, most importantly, exchange-rate losses resulting from the difference between the forex-bureau rate used to purchase gold and the cedi reference rate used by the Bank of Ghana for accounting purposes.
The Minority says this makes it impossible, in its view, to completely remove GoldBod from the discussion about the programme’s financial cost.
The Caucus, however, stops short of saying GoldBod alone caused the entire US$1.7 billion loss. Instead, it argues that responsibility must be apportioned among all the institutions and actors involved.
The Minority has presented an accounting explanation for how GoldBod could record revenue while the Bank of Ghana recorded a loss.
According to its statement, the Bank of Ghana advanced funds, while GoldBod acted as a key sourcing channel for acquiring doré from aggregators.
The Bank subsequently accounted for and monetised the gold, with the overall financial outcome affected by the purchase price, off-taker discounts, exchange-rate differences and the fees associated with the gold acquisition process.
Under that structure, GoldBod could record fees as revenue while the Bank of Ghana, as the financing principal, carried the resulting loss on its books.
The Minority argues that separate accounting treatment does not necessarily eliminate the underlying economic relationship between the two transactions.
The Caucus further cites the IMF’s description of GoldBod’s involvement in the 2025 programme. It says the Bank of Ghana purchased and exported about 104 tonnes of artisanal and small-scale gold valued at US$10.9 billion during 2025, with GoldBod handling most of the sourcing operations.
The Minority also cites the IMF’s description of doré being acquired domestically through GoldBod acting as a broker. The Minority’s argument is not that GoldBod alone controlled every aspect of the programme.
