BY Grace Zigah
The controversy over the gold-for-reserves programme has entered a new phase, with growing questions being directed at the Bank of Ghana (BoG) over its silence following a fierce public dispute between the Minority in Parliament and Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod) Chief Executive Officer Sammy Gyamfi over a reported US$1.7 billion loss recorded under the Domestic Gold Purchase Programme (DGPP) in 2025.
The figure, equivalent to about GH¢22 billion, has become the centre of a political and financial storm, with GoldBod insisting that the loss belongs to the Bank of Ghana’s programme and not to GoldBod’s own books.
The IMF has indeed reported that the DGPP generated losses of more than US$1.7 billion in 2025, representing about 1.5% of the GDP, while also explaining that the losses reflected several factors, including fees, off-taker discounts and exchange-rate effects. The raging questions on the lips of interested parties are who are the beneficiaries of the discounts, fees as well as other payments leading to alleged recorded loss of $1.7 billion.
The silence from the central bank is now becoming an important part of the controversy because the Bank of Ghana is the institution whose balance sheet absorbed the reported loss.
While Mr Gyamfi has mounted a detailed defence of GoldBod and repeatedly challenged the Minority to identify where the IMF accused GoldBod itself of incurring the US$1.7 billion loss, the Bank of Ghana has not publicly provided a comprehensive response addressing the competing claims about how the loss occurred, how much of it was attributable to the various costs of the programme and what responsibility different institutions carried.
The Minority, led by Alexander Afenyo-Markin, says the debate cannot be reduced to which institution’s ledger carries the loss because the resources involved are ultimately public funds.
The Minority has therefore demanded accountability for the entire amount, regardless of whether it appears on the books of the central bank or another state institution.
The disagreement has its roots in the evolution of Ghana’s Domestic Gold Purchase Programme, under which the Bank of Ghana purchased domestically produced gold as part of efforts to strengthen the country’s foreign-exchange reserves.
GoldBod was established in 2025 and subsequently became a central player in the country’s gold-trading architecture.
Gyamfi has explained that GoldBod initially inherited the role of the former Precious Minerals Marketing Company (PMMC) as a buying agent for the Bank of Ghana under an agreement signed in 2023. He insists that during that period GoldBod’s responsibility was to purchase and aggregate gold for the central bank and account for the funds advanced to it, rather than sell the gold or determine the final selling price and terms.
GoldBod has said it accounted for approximately GH¢133 billion advanced for gold purchases during 2025.
The GoldBod CEO has therefore drawn a firm distinction between GoldBod’s financial performance and the Bank of Ghana’s DGPP losses. According to Gyamfi, GoldBod’s audited 2025 accounts recorded an operational surplus of GH¢907 million and an overall surplus exceeding GH¢5.4 billion.
He says those figures demonstrate that GoldBod itself did not record the GH¢22 billion trading loss alleged by its political opponents.
However, the Minority argues that this distinction does not end the accountability question. Afenyo-Markin says GoldBod’s fees formed part of the overall cost of the programme and points to the IMF’s identification of service and assay fees paid to GoldBod among the components of the reported losses.
The IMF also identified discounts on gold sold to off-takers and, most importantly, losses associated with the spread between the forex-bureau exchange rate at which gold was purchased and the Bank of Ghana’s reference rate used for accounting.
The Minority therefore wants the central bank to explain the precise transaction chain—from the funds advanced for gold purchases, through the acquisition and aggregation of gold, to its eventual sale and accounting treatment—so that Ghanaians can determine where the US$1.7 billion exposure actually originated.
Another significant development is GoldBod’s assertion that its own trading model is separate from the old DGPP arrangement. Mr Gyamfi has said GoldBod did not begin implementing the trading model envisaged under the GoldBod Act until March 2026, after receiving its revolving seed trade capital in December 2025 and putting the necessary systems in place.
He has also argued that the reported 2025 losses arose from the Bank of Ghana’s DGPP model, which had existed before GoldBod’s establishment. GoldBod has further maintained that the reported losses should be understood within the broader economic objective of the programme, including the accumulation of foreign-exchange reserves and support for macroeconomic stability.
The IMF reported that the scaling-up of the programme coincided with the increase in Ghana’s reserves from US$8.9 billion in 2024 to about US$13 billion in 2025, while Mr Gyamfi has also associated the programme with the cedi’s appreciation and falling inflation.
The situation has become even more complicated by the changing financial relationship between GoldBod and the Bank of Ghana.
Sammy Gyamfi has stated that GoldBod has been moving towards independently raising funds for its artisanal and small-scale mining gold purchases rather than depending on the central bank as an intermediary. He has also communicated to gold dealers regarding changes to the routing of dollar payments, signalling a significant shift from the earlier arrangement involving the Bank of Ghana.
Yet this development raises a fundamental question about the central bank’s current position: if the Bank of Ghana carried the reported US$1.7 billion loss, what precisely does the Bank say caused that loss; what proportion came from exchange-rate valuation, GoldBod’s fees, off-taker discounts and other costs; why did the central bank continue the programme despite the financial exposure; what were the contractual obligations between BoG and GoldBod; what amount did GoldBod actually receive; what gold was purchased with those funds; where was the gold ultimately sold; who determined the sale prices and discounts; and, following GoldBod’s move towards independent financing and its instruction concerning dollar payments, what exactly remains the Bank of Ghana’s responsibility under the new arrangement? These questions have not been comprehensively answered by the central bank in the public debate so far.
The controversy therefore leaves Ghana facing a striking accountability gap: GoldBod says the US$1.7 billion is a Bank of Ghana loss, while the Minority insists that the loss is a national financial burden that cannot be separated from the activities, fees and sourcing arrangements of institutions involved in the programme.
The IMF’s assessment provides important context, but it does not by itself settle every question of individual institutional responsibility. Indeed, the IMF has indicated that the programme’s costs included multiple components and that a special audit was being undertaken to examine the DGPP from its inception.
GoldBod has defended its own audited accounts and says it has not suffered the loss being attributed to it, while the Minority is demanding a deeper examination of the transactions.
For ordinary Ghanaians, however, the dispute is ultimately less about political exchanges between Sammy Gyamfi and Afenyo-Markin and more about the fate of public resources. If the Bank of Ghana has absorbed a loss of US$1.7 billion under a state-backed gold programme, the public deserves a clear account of how that figure was generated, who made the relevant decisions, what contractual arrangements governed the transactions and what safeguards existed to prevent such exposure.
The Bank of Ghana’s silence has consequently become a story in itself.
Until the central bank provides its own detailed account and the underlying transaction records and special-audit findings are made available, the competing explanations will continue to leave unanswered questions about who carried the risk.
