A Minority Caucus press conference accused the Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod) of GH₵22 billion in losses in 2025. GoldBod’s CEO, Sammy Gyamfi, called it a “barefaced lie,” pointing to an audited surplus and the absence of a loss figure in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) document. JoyNews Research examined both IMF reports cited and GoldBod’s audited accounts, line by line. MISLEADING: GoldBod did not make a trading loss in 2025; its own audited accounts show a surplus. But the GH₵22 billion figure the Minority cited is real and correctly quoted from the IMF. It is the Bank of Ghana’s loss under a gold-purchase programme; GoldBod served only as a paid buying agent, not a loss on GoldBod’s own books. TRUE: Nowhere in either IMF document, not in 47 separate mentions of ‘GoldBod’ across the 182-page Staff Report, and not in paragraph 13 itself, does the IMF say GoldBod caused the loss, or that the loss sits on GoldBod’s books.
Ghana’s Minority Caucus in Parliament, led by Minority Leader Alexander Afenyo-Markin, publicly accused the Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod) of “losing 22 billion Ghana cedis plus in one year,” a figure it said came directly from the International Monetary Fund.
GoldBod’s Chief Executive Officer, Sammy Gyamfi, appeared at the Government Accountability Series to reject the claim outright, describing it as “a barefaced lie” and pointing to GoldBod’s own audited 2025 financial statements, which recorded a surplus.
Both cannot be right, or can they? JoyNews Research obtained and read in full the two IMF documents both sides have referenced: the Sixth Review Staff Report (IMF Country Report No. 26/212) and its companion Selected Issues Paper (Country Report No. 26/213, "Lessons from the Bank of Ghana’s Domestic Gold Purchase Programme")—alongside GoldBod’s Auditor-General-certified 2025 accounts.
Here is what they show.
The claim: "GoldBod losses" of GH₵22 billion
At the press conference, the Minority's central figure was unambiguous: a loss of US$1.7 billion, or roughly GH₵22 billion, in 2025 alone, about 1.5 percent of Ghana's entire GDP.
“The head of an institution accused of losing 22 billion Ghana cedis plus in 1 year should not be talking about our tone. He should be talking about his ledger.” — Minority Caucus press conference, 18 August 2026
The Minority went further, quoting what it said was paragraph 13 of an IMF Selected Issues Paper (Country Report No. 26/213), reproduced verbatim: that the loss was "a combination of service and assay fees paid to Gold Board, discount on gold sold to off-takers… and, most importantly," the exchange-rate spread between Forex Bureau rate paid to purchase gold and the CD reference rate used for BOG accounting."”;
JoyNews Research traced this exact quotation to paragraph 13 of the IMF Selected Issues Paper (Country Report No. 26/213), published in August 2026. It matches almost word-for-word.
The paragraph, reproduced below, does exist and does say what the Minority quoted it as saying.
The figures check out. The IMF confirms that Domestic Gold Purchase Programme (DGPP) losses rose from roughly US$400 million in 2024 to "over $1.7 billion (1.5 percent of GDP) in 2025, a loss equal to 17 percent of the value of the gold the programme sold. The companion Staff Report separately confirms Ghana’s central bank, the Bank of Ghana, ended 2025 with negative equity of GH₵93.8 billion, or –6.7 percent of GDP, which the Minority also cited accurately.
The catch: Whose loss is it?
Here is where the Minority’s framing runs into trouble. Nowhere in either IMF document, not in 47 separate mentions of ‘GoldBod’ across the 182-page Staff Report, and not in paragraph 13 itself, does the IMF say GoldBod caused the loss, or that the loss sits on GoldBod’s books.
Paragraph 13 explicitly attributes it to "the BoG": "DGPP operations have generated significant losses for the BoG," the paper states, before listing GoldBod’s fees as only one of three contributing components, alongside off-taker discounts and, "most importantly," the exchange-rate spread between Forex Bureau rate paid to purchase gold and the CD reference rate used for BOG accounting.
This is the crux of GoldBod’s rebuttal, and on this narrow point, it is accurate.
“No where in the under-referenced IMF reports is the GoldBod accused as having caused losses incurred by the Bank of Ghana under the Bank's DGPP… I challenge Afenyo Markin to point to any page, paragraph, sentence, or phrase.” — Sammy Gyamfi, GoldBod CEO, 19 August 2026
What the IMF report itself says:
The IMF's own account of the institutional history supports this. GoldBod was established only in April 2026 and spent that year as a fee-earning buying agent for the programme, not one GoldBod incurring itself.
Strip that out, and GoldBod’s core operating surplus from fees was GH₵909.7 million (or GH₵896.29 million, per the notes’ own "without subvention");
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Source: MyJoyOnline
