If you have followed Ghana’s news over the past week, you have probably seen two headlines fighting for your attention.
One says GoldBod lost GH¢22 billion. The other says GoldBod made GH¢5.4 billion in profit.
Both sides have numbers. Both produce documents. Both claim the IMF supports their case. And the ordinary Ghanaian sitting at home, scrolling through social media or listening to news, trying to make sense of it all is left with one honest question:
Who do we believe?
The answer, surprisingly, is that both sides are telling versions of the truth. The problem is they are talking about different things.
The Two Stories
Let us start with what the Minority is saying.
At a press conference, Minority Leader Alexander Afenyo-Markin cited the IMF’s sixth review report, which recorded a US$1.7 billion loss, about GH¢22 billion, linked to Ghana’s Domestic Gold Purchase Programme in 2025 . His argument is straightforward: the gold programme lost money, and GoldBod was at the centre of it.
Now let us hear what GoldBod CEO Sammy Gyamfi is saying.
At the Government Accountability Series, he presented the institution’s audited financial statements, signed off by the Auditor-General. The numbers are clear: an operational surplus of GH¢907 million and an overall surplus of GH¢5.4 billion . The Auditor-General raised no adverse findings . As Gyamfi put it, the claim that GoldBod made losses is “simply a barefaced lie” .
Here is where it gets interesting. Both of these statements can be true at the same time.
The One Thing We Are All Missing
The key to understanding this controversy lies in a distinction that has been lost in the political noise.
The IMF’s US$1.7 billion figure refers to losses recorded on the Bank of Ghana’s balance sheet . It is a loss suffered by the central bank under the Domestic Gold Purchase Programme. GoldBod’s GH¢5.4 billion surplus refers to profits recorded on GoldBod’s own corporate accounts. These are two different institutions. Two different sets of books. Two different accounting rules.
The Minority is citing the IMF’s assessment of the Bank of Ghana’s financial position. GoldBod is citing its own audited financial statements. Neither is fabricating numbers. They are simply looking at different ledgers.
Gyamfi made this point forcefully when he challenged the Minority to “point to any page, paragraph, sentence or phrase in the under-referenced reports of the IMF, where the GoldBod was accused as the entity responsible for losses incurred by the Bank of Ghana under the DGPP” . He also raised a pointed question: if the IMF says the Bank of Ghana lost US$400 million in 2024 under the same programme, and there was no GoldBod in 2024, then who caused that loss?
How One Institution Can Profit While Another Loses
For those of us who are not accountants, this might seem impossible. How can one institution be profitable while another is losing money on the same programme?
The answer lies in how the programme was structured.
Under the arrangement inherited from the defunct Precious Minerals Marketing Company (PMMC), GoldBod served as a gold-buying agent for the Bank of Ghana . Its role was limited to purchasing and aggregating gold from small-scale miners. It had no role in selling the gold, no say in pricing, and no involvement in off-take agreements. In return, GoldBod was paid fees: an assay fee of 0.258% and a service fee of 0.5%, totalling 0.758% . These fees contributed to its reported surplus.
Meanwhile, the Bank of Ghana absorbed the costs of financing the purchases, including exchange rate losses, discounts on gold sold to off-takers, and valuation effects. The IMF notes that the reported losses “partly reflect valuation effects” rather than economic costs of the same amount .
This is not a fraud. It is a design flaw. The programme placed operational risk on the central bank while fees flowed to GoldBod. The buying agent profited. The financing institution bore the cost.
What the IMF Actually Found
The IMF’s Country Report No. 26/213 identified that losses from the Domestic Gold Purchase Programme exceeded US$1.7 billion in 2025, equivalent to 1.5% of GDP. This was a significant increase from the US$400 million loss recorded in 2024.
The IMF identified three main sources of these losses :
- Service and assay fees paid to GoldBod
- Discounts on gold sold to off-takers and exporters
- Exchange rate losses from the spread between the forex bureau rate used to purchase gold and the cedi reference rate used for BoG accounting.
The report also noted that transaction costs associated with the programme reached about 14.5% of gold value in 2025 . The Bank of Ghana’s negative equity stood at 6.7% of GDP by the end of 2025. However, the IMF also acknowledged that the programme contributed to reserve accumulation and that the expansion of formal gold purchases supported the growth of official gold exports.
Did the Programme Deliver Any Benefit?
This is where the conversation becomes more complicated. The Domestic Gold Purchase Programme was not designed primarily to make a profit. Its objectives were policy-driven: to formalise the small-scale mining sector, reduce gold smuggling, strengthen foreign exchange reserves, and support the cedi. On these measures, there are real achievements.
The Bank of Ghana reports that gross international reserves rose from US$9.11 billion to US$13.83 billion in 2025, equivalent to 5.7 months of import cover . The cedi appreciated by over 40% against the US dollar in 2025 . Through the programme, the Bank accumulated 2.9 million ounces of gold, which helped strengthen reserves and stabilise the foreign exchange market without placing additional pressure on the cedi.
However, as the IMF notes, not all of this reserve accumulation can be attributed to the gold programme alone. High global gold prices and a strong current account also played significant roles.
The Real Question Ghana Should Be Asking
The political debate has focused on attribution: who is to blame for the losses? This is a distraction.
The real question is whether Ghana, as a nation, created net economic value from this programme after accounting for all costs and benefits. A profit reported by one state institution does not automatically mean taxpayers gained overall. Likewise, a loss reported on the Bank of Ghana’s balance sheet does not automatically mean the entire programme failed.
What Ghana needs is consolidated public-sector accounting, a single, transparent presentation showing the programme’s total costs (financing, exchange rate effects, fees) alongside its total benefits (reserve accumulation, formalisation, foreign exchange stabilisation).
*What Happens Next? *
There are already signs of reform. The Bank of Ghana Governor Dr. Johnson Pandit Asiama told Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee that major reforms were introduced in 2025, including ring-fencing gold proceeds, stricter settlement rules, and reduced fees. Off-taker discounts, agent fees, and assay charges have been cut, lowering total transaction costs to about 1.7% .
Further reforms are planned for 2026, including structured hedging, cost renegotiation, and a gradual withdrawal of direct BoG funding. A recapitalisation plan for the Bank of Ghana is also in place, spanning 2026 to 2032, to address the central bank’s negative equity position, which stood at GH¢93.82 billion by the end of 2025.
The Bottom Line
The GoldBod debate is not primarily about whether one politician has defeated another in a press conference. It is about how public institutions communicate economic reality.
In economics, context matters as much as numbers.
The Minority is right to highlight that the Bank of Ghana incurred significant losses. GoldBod is right to insist that its own accounts show a surplus. Both are being truthful. Both are being selective. What citizens deserve is not partisan talking points but a complete picture, one that shows the full costs and benefits of the programme across all state institutions. Because at the end of the day, it is not about who wins the argument in the news. It is about whether Ghana is managing its gold resources in a way that benefits the people. That is the question that deserves an honest answer.
By Professor E. F. Oteng-Abayie, Economist
The author is an economist. The views expressed are independent and do not represent any political party or institution.
