The CEO of GOLDBOD, Sammy Gyamfi, has rejected claims that the Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod) was responsible for the US$1.7 billion loss recorded by the Bank of Ghana (BoG) under the Domestic Gold Purchase Programme (DGPP) in 2025.
He says recent attempts to link GoldBod directly to the Bank of Ghana’s losses misrepresent the findings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Speaking at the Government Accountability Series, Mr Gyamfi said the IMF reports cited by critics did not accuse GoldBod of causing the losses incurred by the central bank.
He challenged Minority Leader Alexander Afenyo-Markin and others making the claim to identify any specific paragraph, sentence or section of the IMF reports where GoldBod was described as the entity responsible for the BoG’s losses.
According to him, the IMF’s Selected Issues report stated that the significant scaling up of the Domestic Gold Purchase Programme in 2025 led to losses of more than US$1.7 billion for the Bank of Ghana.
He said the IMF also indicated that the accounting losses partly reflected valuation effects rather than purely economic costs.
Sammy Gyamfi further explained that the IMF report identified several components associated with the losses, including service and asset fees paid to GoldBod, discounts on gold sold to off-takers and, most importantly, foreign-exchange losses arising from the difference between the rates used to purchase gold and the reference rate used for the Bank of Ghana’s accounting.
He stressed that the reference to fees paid to GoldBod did not amount to an IMF finding that GoldBod caused the Bank of Ghana’s US$1.7 billion loss.
He also cited the IMF’s recent review of Ghana’s Extended Credit Facility programme, which he said described the DGPP as having weighed on the financial sustainability of the Bank of Ghana.
According to the IMF report, the DGPP generated losses of about 1.5% of GDP in 2025.
Mr. Gyamfi noted that the IMF also reported that the Bank of Ghana, GoldBod and government signed a memorandum of understanding in July 2026 to formalise the transfer of DGPP activities from the central bank to GoldBod, with the aim of eliminating related fiscal risks to the Bank of Ghana.
He said the IMF had also indicated that an external audit of the DGPP, covering its operations since its inception in 2021, was underway.
The government therefore urged the media and fact-checkers to examine the IMF reports carefully instead of attributing statements to the Fund that it did not make.
“The fact-checkers must get to work,” he said, insisting that the IMF should not be cited as saying GoldBod caused the Bank of Ghana’s US$1.7 billion loss when the reports do not make such a conclusion.
Ghana|Atinkaonline.com|Mavis Fantevi