By Daniel Bampoe
The opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) has renewed its attack on the government’s gold purchasing arrangements, alleging that Ghana incurred a staggering GH¢22 billion loss through its gold purchase programme in 2025 and demanding a full public accounting of how the losses were incurred.
The party says the scale of the alleged losses raises serious questions about the financial architecture of the programme, the relationship between the Bank of Ghana and the Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod), and the government’s disclosure of the transactions.
In a statement dated September 1, 2026, and issued under the title “Further Issues About the GH¢22 Billion Loss on Gold Transactions,” the NPP Policy Co-ordination Committee said its assessment was based on the IMF Country Report 2026/212, the audited 2025 accounts of the Bank of Ghana, GoldBod’s published data and other information from the two institutions.
Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, MP and Chairman of the NPP Policy Co-ordination Committee, signed the statement.
The party’s central argument is that the frequently cited figures from the IMF, Bank of Ghana and GoldBod refer to different parts of the same gold-trading system and therefore should not be treated as contradictory without reconciling the accounts.
According to the NPP, GoldBod reported a GH¢5.45 billion surplus, the Bank of Ghana recorded a GH¢9.05 billion net loss, while the IMF report put the broader economic cost of the programme at $1.7billion approximately GH¢22 billion.
The NPP argues that these figures measure different stages or aspects of the transactions.
The party further contends that the IMF did not independently manufacture the GH¢22 billion figure. Rather, it says the Fund’s reports were based on information submitted by the Bank of Ghana, the Ministry of Finance and other government agencies.
The NPP therefore argues that the government cannot dismiss the IMF assessment without accounting for the underlying information supplied to the Fund.
At the heart of the controversy is the financing structure used for the gold purchase programme. The NPP says approximately GH¢5 billion transferred from the Consolidated Fund was described by the Finance Minister as a recapitalisation bond.
The party argues that, in substance, the arrangement represents a liability that Ghanaian taxpayers will ultimately repay through future budgets.
The opposition also points to GH¢7.99 billion in paper gains booked as income by the Bank of Ghana. According to the statement, these gains arose from unrealised gains accumulated on gold purchased in 2023 and 2024 under the previous Akufo-Addo administration and subsequently monetised in 2025.
The NPP argues that when this accounting reclassification is removed from the calculation, the Bank’s reported financial position changes substantially.
The party says that subtracting the GH¢5 billion Consolidated Fund transfer and the GH¢7.99 billion paper gains from the IMF’s GH¢22 billion figure leaves a difference of approximately GH¢9.01 billion, which it says is close to the Bank of Ghana’s reported GH¢9.05 billion net loss.
The NPP therefore maintains that the disagreement is largely about how the various components of the programme were classified and accounted for, rather than whether the transactions generated substantial losses.
NPP challenges GoldBod’s GH¢5.45bn “surplus”
A major part of the opposition’s criticism concerns GoldBod’s reported GH¢5.45 billion surplus. The NPP disputes the description of the entire amount as an operating surplus, saying about GH¢4.54 billion, or 81.7 percent, was a government capital injection credited to GoldBod’s books on December 30, 2025—one day before the financial year ended.
The party argues that such a capital injection should not be treated as trading revenue or operational profit. It says public-sector and international accounting principles distinguish between an owner’s capital contribution and income generated through commercial activity. The NPP further points to GoldBod’s own descriptions of the amount as revolving trade capital and questions why the money should be presented as part of a surplus when assessing the institution’s performance.
According to the statement, only about GH¢909.9 million of the remaining amount represented fee income, with approximately GH¢827 million coming mainly from service charges paid to GoldBod by the Bank of Ghana for gold-related operations.
The NPP consequently argues that the bulk of GoldBod’s reported surplus was not generated from its own trading activities.
The opposition raises a broader question: How can an institution whose operations allegedly contributed to a GH¢22 billion loss for the country report a multi-billion-cedi surplus? The NPP says the answer requires a transparent reconciliation of the accounts of GoldBod, the Bank of Ghana and the Ministry of Finance.
Bank of Ghana’s Gold Gains Under Scrutiny
The NPP also challenges the way the Bank of Ghana’s gold-related financial results were presented. According to the statement, the Bank’s gold-related results would have produced a considerably larger loss but for GH¢9.57 billion in gold-sale gains, which the party describes as the institution’s single largest source of income for the year.
Of that amount, the NPP says GH¢7.99 billion was an accounting reclassification involving unrealised gains. The party argues that while valuation gains can legitimately appear in financial statements, their treatment should not obscure the underlying cash economics of the gold transactions.
The opposition says the issue becomes particularly important because the IMF reportedly attributed only part of the losses to valuation effects. It further argues that discounts granted to foreign buyers represented money that never reached Ghana, while fees paid to GoldBod were real cash costs.
The NPP says the combination of these factors makes it necessary to distinguish between accounting gains, actual cash receipts, trading costs and the ultimate economic cost to the state.
Exchange Rates, Discounts And Fees Blamed For Losses
The statement identifies what it describes as structural costs built into almost every stage of the gold trading process.
One of those costs, according to the NPP, arose from different exchange rates. The party says the Bank of Ghana advanced cedis at the official interbank rate, while GoldBod paid small-scale miners at the higher rate available through foreign-exchange bureaux.
The opposition argues that the exchange-rate gap therefore generated an additional cost on every purchase.
The party also points to discounts granted to foreign buyers. It cites an October 2025 transaction in which Ghana sold gold at approximately US$3,919 per ounce, compared with a world average of about US$4,054, representing a discount of roughly 3.3 percent. At the volumes involved, the NPP estimates that such discounts could amount to approximately US$450 million in a year.
Another cost identified is handling. The statement says a 0.5 percent service fee and a 0.258 percent charge were imposed on the full value of each transaction, regardless of whether the trade ultimately generated a profit or a loss.
According to the NPP, the IMF put these combined costs at 14.5 percent of the programme’s value in 2025, before they fell to 5.4 percent under a new arrangement. The party says this meant Ghana was operating a system in which the more gold it traded, the greater the potential losses became.
The opposition insists that the losses cannot simply be blamed on the gold market. It notes that gold prices rose by 62.9 percent in 2025, from an average of about US$2,395 per ounce to US$3,441. Yet, despite the exceptionally favourable gold-price environment, the NPP says the country still lost money on the programme.
Did the programme really increase Ghana’s reserves?
The NPP also challenges the government’s argument that the gold programme was justified because it strengthened Ghana’s foreign-exchange reserves.
According to the statement, Gold contributed approximately US$60.9 million, or just 1.3 percent, to the increase in Ghana’s reserves. At the same time, the NPP says the Bank of Ghana’s own data show that the country’s actual gold holdings declined from 30.5 tonnes to 18.6 tonnes, representing a 39 percent reduction.
The party therefore questions whether the increase in reserves can properly be attributed to the gold programme. It says the increase in reserves came primarily from other sources, including remittances of US$7.79 billion, cocoa earnings of US$3.86 billion, crude-oil exports of US$2.62 billion and foreign direct investment of US$2.51 billion.
The statement further cites IMF data showing that foreign-currency inflows linked to the programme amounted to about US$10.9 billion, but says the Bank sold approximately US$10.6 billion straight back into the local market.
The NPP consequently argues that, in practical terms, the programme functioned as a foreign-exchange operation rather than a straightforward mechanism for building a reserve buffer through accumulated gold.
