The Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod) has engaged commercial banks on a new Spot FX and Intermediation Framework to provide authorised commercial banks with predictable and transparent access to United States dollars through its GoldBod GoFX platform.
Under the structured framework, GoldBod will ordinarily conduct spot FX sales twice weekly, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, with participating banks submitting requests during a designated sales window.
Where demand exceeds the available FX tranche, allocations will be made on a pro-rata basis to ensure a transparent and equitable distribution of available foreign exchange.
Transactions will be settled on a same-day basis, with the USD leg completed by 3:00 p.m. and the Ghana cedi leg by 4:00 p.m.
To promote genuine market demand and prevent speculation, participating banks will be required to declare that their requests are backed by actual unmet FX demand or evidence of a short position and comply with Bank of Ghana regulations and directives.
The programme will operate under the regulatory oversight of the Bank of Ghana, which will have real-time access to the GoldBod GoFX platform. GoldBod will also provide transaction reports to the central bank after each sale.
The GoFX platform provides electronic submission, allocation processing, time-stamping, transaction histories and audit trails to strengthen transparency, accountability and post-trade verification.
As part of preparations for the rollout of the framework, GoldBod convened a stakeholder conference at its Head Office to engage key industry players and deliberate on the operational framework for the Spot FX and Intermediation Programme.
The framework will be implemented in collaboration with the Bank of Ghana and under the oversight of the Ministry of Finance, with provision for periodic review to ensure continued alignment with macroeconomic and foreign-exchange policy objectives.
