Sammy Gyamfi, the Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod), has dared Minority Leader Alexander Afenyo-Markin to provide evidence where the International Monetary Fund (IMF) blamed GoldBod for the Bank of Ghana losses.
The GoldBod CEO, speaking at the Government Accountability Series, challenged Afenyo-Markin to identify the specific section of the IMF report supporting his claim.
Sammy Gyamfi stated, “I challenge Afenyo-Markin to point to any page, paragraph, sentence, phrase, or punctuation mark in the said reference reports of the IMF where the GoldBod was accused by the IMF as the entity responsible for losses incurred by the Bank of Ghana”.
“Their position has now conveniently changed from the old false narrative that the Gold Board made losses to the new false narrative, which is that the Gold Board is responsible for losses incurred by the Bank of Ghana under the domestic gold purchase program,” he said.
“Ladies and gentlemen, nothing could be further from the truth.”
Sammy Gyamfi asserted that the IMF report states that the Bank of Ghana incurred losses through the sale of gold under the Domestic Gold Purchase Programme, rather than identifying GoldBod as the institution responsible for those losses.
He disclosed that losses were about $400 million in 2024 and $1.7 billion in 2025, arguing that the IMF attributed the 2025 figure to the scaling up of the Domestic Gold Purchase Programme.
“That loss was as a result of the scaling up, the expansion of the programme,” he said.
He further addressed the portion of the IMF findings in which GoldBod features in relation to the reported losses, stressing that the IMF noted that the accounting losses partly reflected valuation effects and identified several components of the losses, including fees paid to GoldBod under the Domestic Gold Purchase Programme.
“This is the true context within which the name of the Gold Board featured relative to losses under the DGPP,” he said.
“Most of the time, they come in the media, and they say the IMF has said that GoldBod has made a loss of $1.7 billion, and nobody questions them to point out which part of the IMF report said that,” he said.
“They say that the IMF says that GoldBod is the reason for the loss, and nobody questions them to provide proof, and we are all talking about the IMF report.”
His comments follow the Minority Leader and Effutu MP, Alexander Afenyo-Markin, who has said the Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod) has made a GH¢22 billion loss to the state.
According to Afenyo-Markin, the GoldBod must account for the GH¢22 billion financial loss to the state.
He argued that the Minority would not be deterred by attacks or criticisms from GoldBod officials as they push for public accountability.
Speaking at a press conference in Parliament on Tuesday, August 18, Afenyo-Markin stated, “So they must account for the GH¢22 billion loss. It must account for it because it amounts to causing financial loss to the state”.
“GoldBod is responsible for causing financial loss to the state and the Minority will say this and say it firmly and boldly,” he said.
“It doesn’t matter the adjectives that they use to describe or to attack our personalities, and we know a day of reckoning will come,” he said.
The minority further argued that GoldBod cannot hide behind an agency role to escape accountability.
Afenyo-Markin rejected GoldBod’s claims that its role as an agent of the Bank of Ghana (BoG) shields it from responsibility for losses arising from the country’s gold trading operations.
He added, “Gold Board cannot hide behind accounting technicalities”.
“Gold Board is entitled to make the accounting point that it was purchasing gold on behalf of the Bank of Ghana. But agency does not extinguish operational responsibility,” he said.
“An agent entrusted with billions of cedis or public resources remains responsible for the quality of its execution,” he said.
Afenyo-Markin added, “If an institution earns transaction-based income for purchasing, assaying, and aggregating gold, while the financier bears the underlying trading losses, then increasing transaction volumes may increase the agent’s revenue, even where the overall programme destroys value for the principal”.
“Any responsible government confronted with these 22 billion losses should immediately investigate whether the incentive structure encouraged excessive volumes, inadequate pricing discipline, or insufficient attention to trading costs,” he said.
“We therefore reject any attempt to answer the public concerns merely by pointing to GoldBod’s reported surplus,” he said.
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