Bank of Ghana lost $1.7bn through GOLDBOD – IMF reveals

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Bank of Ghana

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has revealed that the Bank of Ghana (BoG) lost $1.7 billion through the Ghana Gold Board (GOLDBOD).

In a post shared by Data Scientist and Policy Analyst, Alfred Appiah, on X detailed that Bank of Ghana losses on its 2025 Domestic Gold Purchasing Programme (DGPP) via GoldBod reached $1.7 billion, far above the previously reported $214 million.

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Alfred Appiah also shared an excerpt of the IMF report confirming the scaling of operations led to these losses primarily from G4R doré purchases, service fees, and discounts.

The Policy Analyst in a post detailed, “It turns out the Bank of Ghana lost far more on its domestic gold purchasing programme, implemented through GoldBod, in 2025 than was initially reported.

The $214 million that generated so much discussion was only a fraction of the total. According to the latest disclosures in the IMF report, the Bank of Ghana recorded losses of about $1.7 billion on the programme in 2025, compared with about 400 million dollars in 2024. In effect, the Bank of Ghana lost about 14.5 dollars for every 100 dollars worth of gold purchased in 2025.

To be fair, roughly half of those losses arose from the exchange rate differential between the Bank of Ghana’s accounting exchange rate and the forex bureau rate used to purchase gold from artisanal and small-scale miners.

Even after accounting for that, the losses remain substantial. They are large enough to erode GoldBod’s trading capital and create significant fiscal risks, particularly now that the government intends to make budgetary provisions to support GoldBod’s operations. The government says it will reduce the cost to 5 dollars for every 100 dollars worth of gold purchased. We will have to monitor whether that target is achieved.

In my view, Goldbod also needs to maintain a permanent discount on ASM gold purchases to help offset some of these trading costs. The prices paid for ASM gold are currently among the highest in the region. At the same time, the ASM sector contributes very little in taxes despite accounting for the majority of Ghana’s gold exports, while the environmental destruction from illegal mining continues.

As it stands, we are paying premium prices for galamsey gold while bearing much of the environmental and fiscal cost”.

Also, Bright Simons, the Vice President of Policy Think Tank IMANI Africa, reacting to Alfred Appiah’s post, argued that the exchange rate differential between forex bureau purchases from ASM miners and the BoG’s official accounting rate represents a real public subsidy rather than benign accounting.

He wrote, “The exchange rate differential is not benign or the result of mere accounting conventions. It is a real loss to the Bank of Ghana since it implies a public subsidy. It is tantamount to the government buying dollars at the “forex bureau” rate and selling at the reduced central bank official rate. Because this situation might now transfer to the Finance Ministry (as it takes over from the BoG as the funder of GoldBod’s gold purchases), I will be saying more about it soon.

The IMF did not account for the costs of sterilisation, which is the extra cost (due to interest) of borrowing to remove the cedis the BoG pumped into the market to buy the gold in the first place.

In short, we were right to make noise to force the government, through the Finance Ministry, to transparently pick up the tab for the policy instead of hiding behind the Bank of Ghana’s seemingly bottomless balance sheet”.

See the post below:

@ghnow_ A Ghanaian man shares the devastation left in the aftermath of an anti-illegal mining raid on a galamsey site by personnel of the National Anti-Illegal Mining Operations Secretariat (NAIMOS). #GHNow #fyp ♬ Sad Music – Max-Music
@ghnow_ Washroom facilities constructed at the Pokuase Interchange #FYP #GHNow ♬ original sound – FEG ZIGGY SARKCESS
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