Former Dean of the School of Economics at the University of Cape Coast (UCC), Professor James Atta Peprah, has urged the Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod) to end its dependence on Bank of Ghana (BoG) funding for gold buying.
He said GoldBod should rather source financing from the open money market at market rates to fund its gold acquisition and trading activities.
According to Prof. Atta Peprah, that model would position GoldBod more like a commercial gold-trading firm and also shield the central bank from losses linked to its operations.
“Ideally, GoldBod business, from my point of view, should be separated from the government, from the central bank or Bank of Ghana,” he said.
Speaking on Eyewitness News, which was monitored by Ghanaian Radar, Prof. Atta Peprah said GoldBod ought to take commercial loans, use the capital to buy and stockpile gold, and then sell it as part of regular business.
“The best approach is to go to the money market, borrow at commercial rates, buy the gold, aggregate and do whatever you want to do with it,” he said.His remarks follow controversy over a reported $1.7 billion loss tied to Ghana’s Domestic Gold Purchase Programme (DGPP) in 2025.
The Chief Executive Officer of GoldBod, Sammy Gyamfi, on Wednesday, August 19, 2026, dismissed claims that GoldBod lost $1.7 billion in 2025, calling the allegation a “barefaced lie.”
Mr Gyamfi, speaking at the Government Accountability Series, said the figure quoted did not reflect GoldBod’s true financial results for the 2025 fiscal year.He has specifically faulted Minority Leader Alexander Afenyo-Markin for making the claim repeatedly in Parliament and in the media.
But Prof. Atta Peprah said the current funding link between GoldBod and the Bank of Ghana makes full independence hard to justify.He argued that when the central bank bankrolls GoldBod’s operations, any losses from those activities could end up affecting BoG’s own books.
“Why should we blame a BoG loss on Gold Board? They financed it. BoG financed it. They cannot be treated as separate entities,” he said.“So I think there should be separation of this business between Gold Board and Bank of Ghana.
Gold Board takes your money from the open market, pitches the gold, aggregates it, whatever you want to do with it, and says that BoG doesn’t come in,” he said.He insisted that GoldBod should carry the commercial risks of its gold-trading business instead of passing them on to the central bank.
