Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod) Chief Executive Officer Sammy Gyamfi has rejected claims by Minority Leader Alexander Afenyo-Markin that GoldBod was responsible for a US$1.7 billion loss recorded in 2025.
Speaking at the Government Accountability Series in Accra on Wednesday, August 19, 2026, Mr Gyamfi challenged Mr Afenyo-Markin to identify any passage in an International Monetary Fund (IMF) report that directly attributes the loss to GoldBod.
According to Mr Gyamfi, the IMF report instead linked the US$1.7 billion loss to the scaling-up of the Bank of Ghana’s Domestic Gold Purchase Programme (DGPP).
He argued that the report addresses the programme’s impact on the Bank of Ghana’s financial position rather than describing the US$1.7 billion as a loss incurred by GoldBod.
“I challenge Afenyo-Markin to point to any page, paragraph, sentence, phrase or punctuation mark … where the Gold Board was accused … as the entity responsible for losses incurred by the Bank of Ghana,” Mr Gyamfi said.
The IMF’s reporting, however, confirms substantial losses associated with the DGPP.
In its 2025 review, the Fund said the programme posed risks to the financial sustainability of the Bank of Ghana and reported US$214 million in losses from the artisanal and small-scale mining component of Gold-for-Reserves transactions through the third quarter of 2025.
A subsequent IMF report put the 2025 losses from the scaled-up programme at more than US$1.7 billion, equivalent to about 1.5% of Ghana’s GDP.
The report identified several factors contributing to the losses, including service and assay fees paid to GoldBod, discounts on gold sold to off-takers, and foreign-exchange losses arising from differences between the rates used to purchase the gold and those applied in the Bank of Ghana’s accounting.
The IMF also noted that, following its establishment in April 2025, GoldBod became the institution through which the Bank of Ghana purchased artisanal and small-scale mining gold.
Mr Gyamfi further cited GoldBod’s audited 2025 financial statements, saying the institution recorded an operational surplus of GH¢907 million and an overall surplus of GH¢5.4 billion.
He explained that the overall figure included GH¢4.5 billion in government-provided revolving seed capital, while insisting that GoldBod’s accounts did not record a US$1.7 billion loss.
He also said the Auditor-General made no adverse finding against GoldBod in its 2025 audit.
The dispute therefore centres on how the DGPP-related losses should be characterised and which institution should bear them.
Mr Afenyo-Markin and the Minority have linked the losses to GoldBod’s gold transactions, while Mr Gyamfi maintains that the IMF’s finding concerns losses on the Bank of Ghana’s balance sheet arising from the expanded programme, rather than a US$1.7 billion loss recorded by GoldBod itself.
The IMF’s 2025 review also stated that losses from the DGPP and GoldBod’s activities should not ultimately be borne by the central bank, with the government expected to cover losses related to the programme.
