By Leo Nelson
The Minority in Parliament, has sounded the alarm regarding a staggering GH₵9 billion fiscal hemorrhage at the Bank of Ghana (BoG), which they claims is being masked by “artificial” profits reported by the Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod).
Addressing a press conference in Accra, the Minority spokesperson on economy, Hon. Kojo Oppong Nkrumah alleged that a systematic reversal of the original Gold Purchase Programme has funneled state resources into a convoluted web of intermediaries, resulting in a net loss to the state despite the appearance of profitability in secondary books.
This financial discrepancy, described as a “camouflage tactic,” suggests that while the central bank’s balance sheet suffers under the weight of nine billion cedis in losses, the Gold Board is simultaneously declaring unprecedented gains from the same transactions.
“The original structure of the Gold Purchase Programme ensured that bullion was accumulated without making losses. It was here in this room that we raised this matter. And then the Gold Board also found its own intermediaries. Eventually, the Bank of Ghana ended up losing nine billion Ghana cedis on those gold transactions.”
The Minority’s contention centers on the shift from a direct accumulation strategy to a decentralized procurement model that necessitates the use of third-party middlemen.
Under the initial structure of the Domestic Gold Purchase Programme, bullion was accumulated as a reserve asset designed to hedge against currency volatility without incurring operational deficits.
However, the new administration’s policy mandate requiring all gold to be routed through the Gold Board has reportedly introduced a layer of “intermediaries” that have siphoned value from the central bank.
Oppong Nkrumah pointed out that when the GH₵900 million profit of GoldBod is netted against the GH₵9 billion loss of the Bank of Ghana, the “real value” of the scheme reveals a devastating blow to the nation’s fiscal health, rather than the economic stability promised by the government.
Policy Reversal and the Rise of Intermediaries
The erosion of Ghana’s gold value, according to extractive experts and the Minority caucus, began when the “original structure” of the purchase programme was dismantled.
Initially, the BoG’s mandate was to leverage local currency to build gold reserves directly, providing a “quasi-fiscal” buffer for the Cedi.
The Minority argued that by mandating GoldBod as the sole aggregator, the administration created a bottleneck that “found its own intermediaries,” effectively privatizing the gains of a national resource while socializing the losses through the central bank’s books.
The result is a fragmented accounting reality where the state appears to be “losing through camouflage.”
While the Gold Board’s GH₵900 million profit is touted as “unprecedented,” the Minority insists this is a mere accounting trick.
Camouflage Tactics and Fiscal Transparency
The Minority claims that these “camouflage tactics” involve the selection of specific aggregators and the use of state funds to purchase gold that may lack proper traceability.
By shifting the point of purchase to a state-owned enterprise (GoldBod) that then sells to the central bank, the government has essentially created a “closed-loop system” where losses are hidden in the complexity of inter-agency transfers.
Furthermore, the Minority has raised alarms over the environmental and ethical implications of this procurement shift.
They suspect that the rush to satisfy the Gold Board’s quotas has led to state money being “used to buy Galamsey gold,” further complicating the moral and financial standing of the programme.
To address these “artificial” figures, the Minority is now demanding a bipartisan parliamentary inquiry to “subpoena all contracts” and force the publication of the fee structures that have led to this GH₵9 billion shortfall.
The True Cost of Economic Stability
While the Bank of Ghana has recently attempted to justify these losses as the “cost of economic stability,” the Minority rejects this narrative as a “rebranding of incompetence.”
They argue that the stability seen in the Cedi is a temporary veneer purchased at the expense of the central bank’s long-term solvency.