Accra, Ghana – Last week, the Ghana Gold Board (GOLDBOD) announced impressive 2025 financial results, assaying 103.8 metric tonnes of artisanal and small-scale (ASM) gold valued at $10.8 billion and 101 metric tonnes of large-scale gold valued at $9.7 billion, while concluding the year with a surplus exceeding GH¢5.4 billion. However, these seemingly successful figures, when juxtaposed with the Bank of Ghana’s (BoG) own 2025 financial statements, reveal a starkly different reality: a staggering GH¢9.05 billion net loss for the central bank, primarily stemming from the domestic gold purchase program managed by GOLDBOD.
Context: The Genesis of GOLDBOD
Established by the Ghana Gold Board Act, 2025 (Act 1140), GOLDBOD was mandated to oversee, monitor, and engage in the buying, selling, and export of gold and other precious minerals. Its objectives included promoting value addition, supporting responsible mining, accumulating gold reserves for the Bank of Ghana, and generating foreign exchange. The entity effectively replaced the Precious Minerals Marketing Company (PMMC) but was granted enhanced monopoly powers over the mineral trade, positioning it as the sole exporter of gold in Ghana.
GOLDBOD was intended to operate using a $279 million revolving fund allocated in the 2025 budget, enabling it to purchase doré gold directly from ASM miners and trade independently. However, this fund was only received in December 2025. For the majority of the year, GOLDBOD functioned as an intermediary, channeling funds from the Bank of Ghana into the field to procure gold on the central bank’s behalf, earning service charges and fees upon assaying the gold.
The Mechanics of the Loss
The core issue driving the significant losses at the Bank of Ghana lies in the operational structure inherited from the previous arrangement with PMMC, which itself was discontinued in March 2025 due to substantial financial costs. Under this model, the Bank of Ghana supplied foreign exchange to GOLDBOD at the official BoG rate to acquire gold from small-scale miners.
Miners, however, were paid based on unofficial forex rates, as they were unwilling to accept the official BoG rate. Compounding this, the gold purchased was raw doré, not refined bullion. Doré trades at a discount on international markets to cover refining, assaying, transport, and financing costs. The discount offered by the BoG, initially 2.25% below world market prices, was reduced incrementally throughout 2024 and 2025.
Furthermore, the Bank of Ghana paid GOLDBOD a 0.5% ad valorem service fee and a 0.258% assay fee on every transaction. This meant the central bank was buying gold at a premium, selling at a discount, and incurring substantial fees, embedding losses directly into the program’s design.
GOLDBOD inherited this fee structure, initially retaining the 0.5% ad valorem and 0.258% assay fees until December 2025, when they were reduced to 0.4% and 0.2% respectively. Crucially, GOLDBOD purchased gold at spot prices, sometimes even above spot to curb smuggling, while the Bank of Ghana sold it below market rates. Data from JoyNews Research indicated that in October 2025, when the global gold price averaged $4,054 per ounce, Ghana realized only $3,919 per ounce, a shortfall of $135 on every ounce.
IMF’s Early Warning
Even before the full financial implications were clear, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) flagged the risks. In its fifth review of Ghana’s economic recovery program, the Fund disclosed that losses from ASM doré gold transactions had reached $214 million by the end of September 2025, approximately 0.2% of GDP. The IMF warned that these losses posed a threat to the financial sustainability of the BoG and should not be borne by the central bank.
Bank of Ghana’s Full Accounts Reveal Deeper Losses
The Bank of Ghana’s final 2025 financial statements confirmed the extent of the problem. The net loss from the Domestic Gold Purchase Programme ballooned to GH¢9.05 billion. The discontinued gold-for-oil arrangement accounted for GH¢203.03 million of this loss over three months. However, the central bank incurred a gross loss of GH¢21.89 billion on its doré gold trade with GOLDBOD.
This GH¢21.89 billion gross loss, approximately $2 billion, represents the cost to the BoG’s balance sheet despite GOLDBOD’s role in exporting ASM gold valued at $10.8 billion. The BoG paid GOLDBOD over GH¢827 million in charges during 2025, with nearly GH¢560 million attributed to service charges alone. Excluding a GH¢4.5 billion government grant to GOLDBOD, approximately 82% of GOLDBOD’s 2025 revenue originated directly from the Bank of Ghana.
The primary driver of this substantial gross loss was the rate gap between the official BoG forex rate and the unofficial market rate used for field purchases. Atta Issah, MP for Sagnarigu and a member of Parliament’s Finance Committee, explained this mechanism: “Bank of Ghana gives money to GOLDBOD to go and purchase the gold. BoG purchases at an International Traded Currency, USD. So it will give USD to GOLDBOD at, for example, $1 to GH¢10. But when they go into the field, you and I know that no gold trader will sell his gold at BoG rate. So the difference between the forex market and BoG rates reflects the loss.”
For instance, if the BoG rate was GH¢10 to $1, but the market rate was GH¢11 to $1, the central bank effectively paid more for less gold. As the program scaled up significantly, the volume of transactions increased, widening the rate gap and escalating the losses. The Bank of Ghana absorbed the full currency risk, price risk, and market execution risk, in a structure where losses were virtually unavoidable.
The GH¢21.89 billion gross loss was reduced to GH¢9.05 billion on the BoG’s income statement through a GH¢5 billion government cost-share intervention and GH¢7.9 billion in realized gains from gold bullion sales reclassified from reserves.
Implications and The Path Forward
GOLDBOD’s CEO announced late last year that the Board would fully assume responsibility for the ASM gold trading program from January 2026, moving away from its intermediary role for the Bank of Ghana. This shift is intended to provide the central bank’s balance sheet with much-needed relief.
However, with GOLDBOD now bearing the full financial risk, the program requires structural adjustments. The practice of indexing field purchase prices to the forex rate, rather than a published market benchmark, needs urgent reconsideration. Unlike cocoa farmers who are paid based on the BoG rate, gold traders were compensated using unofficial rates, ostensibly to prevent smuggling. The cost of smuggling should be addressed through enforcement, not by paying above-spot prices that deplete the central bank’s capital.
GOLDBOD must adopt a firmer stance on discount buying. While market resistance and a potential short-term dip in export volumes are concerns, the financial cost of the current system far outweighs these risks. The question remains whether GOLDBOD, with its GH¢4.5 billion working capital, could sustain the current export pace if it were to absorb losses similar to those incurred by the central bank, which exceeded GH¢20 billion in gross trade losses in a single year.
While GOLDBOD’s individual financial performance in 2025 appeared strong, it came at a significant cost to the Bank of Ghana. The need for Ghana’s gold reserves is undeniable, but a program structured to allow one entity to capture gains while another absorbs all losses is fundamentally flawed and requires immediate reform. Ultimately, the cost to the Bank of Ghana, and by extension the nation, will be borne by Ghanaians through taxes, a reality not reflected in GOLDBOD’s seemingly positive financial statements.
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