The Minority in Parliament has mounted a strong challenge to the financial management of Ghana’s Domestic Gold Purchase Programme (DGPP), demanding detailed explanations from the Bank of Ghana (BoG) and the Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod) over losses of more than US$1.7 billion, equivalent to about GH¢22 billion, recorded in 2025.
The Minority’s concerns follow findings contained in an August 2026 report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which indicated that the significant expansion of the DGPP last year resulted in losses exceeding US$1.7 billion, equivalent to 1.5 per cent of Ghana’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
The development has raised questions about the financial structure of the programme, particularly why such substantial losses were incurred from gold transactions at a time when international gold prices and global demand for the precious metal were rising.
In the same year, GoldBod reported operational surplus of GH¢909.7 million while BoG recorded a net loss of GH¢9.05 billion on DGPP.
Minority Leader, Alexander Afenyo-Markin, has therefore challenged GoldBod and the central bank to provide a comprehensive account of the transactions, including the pricing of gold purchases, discounts granted to off-takers, fees paid to GoldBod and the foreign exchange arrangements that, according to the IMF, contributed significantly to the losses.
He argued that the issue was not simply whether GoldBod had recorded a surplus in its own accounts, but whether the entire cost and risk of the gold trading operations had been transparently captured and accounted for.
$1.7bn loss raises questions
According to the IMF report, the scaling-up of the DGPP in 2025 resulted in losses of more than US$1.7 billion, representing about 17 per cent of the value of doré gold sold by BoG
The IMF attributed the losses largely to transactions involving G4R doré purchases.
The losses, according to the report, were made up of several components, including service and assay fees paid to GoldBod, discounts on gold sold to off-takers and, most importantly, foreign exchange losses arising from the difference between the forex bureau rate used to purchase gold and the cedi reference rate applied by the Bank of Ghana for accounting purposes.
The Minority argues that the scale of the losses demands much more than broad explanations about exchange-rate movements.
Mr Afenyo-Markin questioned why Ghana should have incurred such substantial losses from a gold trading programme when the commodity itself was enjoying strong international demand and rising prices.
“These losses are not bad luck. You don’t trade in gold and make losses. They are not a difficult market,” he said.
He said the figures pointed to what he described as serious weaknesses in the management and policy framework surrounding the programme.
Who benefited from discounted gold?
One of the central questions raised by the Minority concerns the identity of the off-takers who purchased gold from the programme and the basis on which discounts were granted.
Mr Afenyo-Markin demanded greater transparency over the buyers, the volumes involved, the prices at which gold was sold and the justification for any discounts granted.
He argued that the public should be able to establish whether the discounted transactions were commercially justified and whether the country received adequate value from the gold it purchased.
“GoldBod is happy to take credit for the foreign exchange he claims to have generated. But it goes quiet the moment we ask about the very trade that discounted sales, the fee arrangement that produced that forex in the first place,” he said.
For the Minority, the question is straightforward: if GoldBod is responsible for the transactions that generate foreign exchange, it must also account for the costs and risks attached to those transactions.
“You cannot claim the upside of a trade and disown a downside,” Mr Afenyo-Markin added.
BoG carries financing burden
The Minority has also turned its attention to the financial relationship between the BoG and GoldBod.
Under the arrangement, the central bank provides financing to GoldBod, which purchases gold on behalf of the programme.
The gold is subsequently sold, with the resulting foreign exchange intended to support the country’s reserves and help stabilise the cedi.
The Minority, however, argues that the structure raises questions about how gains and losses are allocated between the two institutions.
Mr Afenyo-Markin said GoldBod should not claim credit for the foreign exchange generated by the programme while the Bank of Ghana carries the losses associated with the transactions.
“GoldBod took Bank of Ghana’s money to assay gold and collect its fees. It cannot claim the credit that comes with the revenue while pushing every loss into Bank of Ghana’s balance sheets,” he said.
He argued that such an arrangement could create a situation in which the benefits of the programme are attributed to one institution while the financial risks are effectively absorbed by another.
That, he said, ultimately raises concerns for taxpayers because losses carried by the central bank can have implications for its balance sheet and, by extension, the wider public finances.
‘Fees cannot be separated from costs’
Another major issue raised by the Minority relates to fees collected by GoldBod.
Mr Afenyo-Markin questioned why GoldBod should retain service and assay fees associated with gold transactions while the losses arising from the same operations are attributed to the Bank of Ghana.
“So here is a question GoldBod must answer. If every one of those services, service fees and asset fees were collected and kept, why should the losses that came bundled with earning them belong to someone else?” he asked.
“You do not get to keep the fees and disown the cost. This is not accounting; that is convenience,” he added.
The Minority Leader said the concern was not intended to deny GoldBod credit for any profits it had legitimately generated.
Rather, he said, Parliament needed to understand the transactions and costs that produced those reported profits and determine whether the financial statements of the institutions involved presented the complete picture.
“We, the Minority, are not here to relegate the profit of GoldBod. The profit GoldBod has published in its own account. We are here because of what happened off the books, the operations, the fee structures, the discounted sales that made that profit possible in the first place,” he said.
Dispute over reported surplus
Mr Afenyo-Markin has also questioned the reported financial surplus of GoldBod, arguing that it may not reflect all the costs associated with the gold trading operations.
He accused the government of failing to provide the Auditor-General with what he described as the full financial picture of GoldBod’s activities, particularly costs allegedly borne by the Bank of Ghana.
“Yes, we concede that it is the Auditor-General that has conducted an audit, but the Auditor-General was not given access to the full picture,” he said.
According to him, if costs associated with GoldBod’s transactions were borne by the central bank but were not incorporated into GoldBod’s own accounts, then GoldBod’s reported surplus could not be considered a complete assessment of the programme’s financial performance.
“If the Auditor-General knows that indeed the costs of GoldBod’s transaction were borne by Bank of Ghana, Auditor-General would not declare surplus in its accounting reporting,” he argued.
The Minority is therefore calling for the financial relationship between GoldBod and the Bank of Ghana to be subjected to closer scrutiny to establish precisely where revenues, expenses, gains and losses are recorded.
Why losses amid gold boom?
At the heart of the Minority’s criticism is the apparent contradiction between the strong performance of gold as a global commodity and the scale of losses recorded under the programme.
Gold prices strengthened significantly during 2025 amid strong investor demand, central-bank purchases and global economic uncertainty.
Ghana also experienced a major increase in domestic gold production, with national output reaching record levels.
Against that backdrop, the Minority says the public deserves a clear explanation of why a state-backed gold purchasing programme recorded losses equivalent to about 17 per cent of the value of doré gold sold by the Bank of Ghana.
Mr Afenyo-Markin said the losses could not simply be dismissed as an unavoidable consequence of trading conditions.
He described them instead as evidence of what he considers serious management weaknesses and policy misalignment.
“They expose the crass incompetence of the GoldBod’s management and misaligned policies of the government,” he said.
He further called for greater oversight of GoldBod’s operations, warning against allowing a small group of officials to exercise extensive control over the country’s gold resources without adequate scrutiny.
“No serious institution loses this money by accident. This is what happens when an untouchable few are handed the nation’s gold with no one watching,” he said.
NPP demands full accounting
The Minority is now demanding a comprehensive explanation covering the entire gold trading chain.
Among the questions it wants answered are the identities of the off-takers, the basis for discounted gold sales, the fee arrangements between GoldBod and the Bank of Ghana, the exchange rates used in gold purchases and accounting, and the manner in which the resulting gains and losses were allocated.
It also wants clarification on why the losses were not more prominently reflected in GoldBod’s reported financial position and whether the Auditor-General had access to all relevant information.
The Minority has characterised the reported GH¢22 billion loss as a matter requiring accountability, arguing that losses of such magnitude cannot be treated as a routine cost of implementing monetary and foreign exchange policy.
“So they must account for the GH¢22 billion loss. It must account for it because it amounts to causing financial loss to the state,” Mr Afenyo-Markin said.
The questions are likely to intensify scrutiny of the DGPP, which has become a major component of Ghana’s strategy to mobilise foreign exchange from gold and support the cedi.
For the Minority, however, the central issue is not whether the programme generated foreign exchange, but at what cost that foreign exchange was generated.
It is demanding that the Bank of Ghana and GoldBod provide the public with a full account of the transactions behind the numbers, particularly the circumstances under which a programme involving one of Ghana’s most valuable natural resources could accumulate such substantial losses during a period of strong gold prices and demand.
The controversy therefore puts both institutions under pressure to explain whether the losses were an unavoidable consequence of the programme’s foreign-exchange stabilisation objective or the result of pricing, operational and management decisions that could have been avoided.
