The Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod), Sammy Gyamfi, has emphatically stated that the Bank of Ghana’s $1.7 billion loss under the Domestic Gold Purchase Programme (DGPP) in 2025 is not attributable to GoldBod’s activities. He argues that the reported loss represents a fundamental difference in the BoG’s role compared to GoldBod’s limited function of purchasing and aggregating gold for the central bank, with no involvement in the sale of gold, determining selling prices, or negotiation of off-take agreements.
Speaking at the Government Accountability Series on Wednesday, Mr. Gyamfi clarified that GoldBod’s involvement was strictly limited to purchasing and aggregating gold for the central bank as a buying agent, a role distinct from the subsequent sale, pricing, and agreement-making processes. He stated that GoldBod’s inherited responsibility from the former Precious Minerals Marketing Company (PMMC) under a 2023 Gold Purchase Agreement with the BoG, resulted in approximately GH₵133 billion advanced to it for gold purchases in 2025. ‘The GoldBod had no role in the sale of gold by the BoG under the DGPP,’ he asserted. He further challenged claims linking GoldBod’s fees to the losses, explaining that the 0.258% assay fee and 0.5% service fee paid to GoldBod amounted to only 0.758%, compared with the approximately 17% loss reported by the IMF. Mr. Gyamfi added that the fees were legitimate charges for services rendered and were not unique to GoldBod.
Furthermore, he pointed to the IMF’s description of the losses as partly reflecting ‘valuation effects’, particularly the difference between the Forex Bureau exchange rate used in purchasing gold and the BoG reference rate used for accounting purposes. He noted that the pricing and exchange-rate arrangements were contained within the 2023 agreement predating GoldBod.
Importantly, he said GoldBod did not commence its own statutory trading model until March 2026, after receiving its revolving seed trade capital in December 2025, and placing the necessary systems in place. He emphasized that the DGPP model remained the BoG’s programme and could not retrospectively be described as GoldBod’s trading model. Addressing the broader economic rationale, Mr. Gyamfi asserted that the DGPP was designed as a foreign exchange and economic-stabilisation intervention rather than a profit-making programme, with gold purchased at spot prices as a deliberate policy choice. He said the scaling-up of the programme, which the IMF attributed to the $1.7 billion reported loss, also coincided with Ghana’s international reserves rising from US$8.9 billion in 2024 to about US$13 billion in 2025, alongside a 41% appreciation of the Ghana cedi and a substantial decline in inflation. Mr. Gyamfi meanwhile reiterated that GoldBod itself recorded an operational surplus of GH₵907 million and an overall surplus exceeding GH₵5.4 billion in 2025, according to its audited financial statements.
‘The GoldBod will remain focused on its mandate,’ he said. ‘We will continue to account transparently for our stewardship and we will not be distracted from the important work of creating value for the Ghanaian people from the exploitation of the gold resources of our beloved nation.’ While the GoldBod CEO has clearly disassociated the institution from the reported losses under the BoG’s DGPP, he has not attributed those losses to mismanagement by the Bank of Ghana.”
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Source: Adom Online
