The Minister of Finance, Dr Cassiel Ato Forson, has unveiled a national policy designed to deliberately build external reserves and secure the country’s economic future.
The Ghana Accelerated National Reserve Accumulation Policy (GANRAP – 2026–2028) is designed to boost the country’s international reserves to 15 months of import cover by the end of 2028.
Dr Forson described the initiative as a historic and strategic shift in how the country managed its external buffers, moving away from costly borrowing and short-term reserve-building measures towards a structured, gold-backed and reform-driven accumulation framework.
The policy is anchored on the objectives of the Ghana Gold Board Act, 2025 (Act 1140) which mandates the Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod) to generate foreign exchange for the country and support the gold reserve accumulation by the Bank of Ghana.
Laying the policy statement on the floor of Parliament yesterday, Dr Forson, who is the Member of Parliament for Ajumako Enyan Essiam in the Central Region, said the GANRAP set clear intermediate targets: 8.6 months of import cover by December 2026 and 11.8 months by the close of 2027, culminating in the 15-month goal in 2028.
That strategy, he explained, required an average annual addition of $9.5 billion to the gross international reserves.
To achieve the targets of GANRAP, Dr Forson said the GoldBod would acquire up to 2.4 tonnes of gold weekly from artisanal and small-scale miners, backed by budgetary allocations from the Ministry of Finance.
Concurrently, he said, the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources would exercise preemption rights to purchase a minimum of 0.57 tonnes of gold weekly from large-scale mines.
The gold to be acquired would be refined locally and shipped to LBMA-certified refineries for melting, shaping them into bars and stamping before being integrated into the nation’s fiscal gold reserves.
“This gold shall only be sold by the central bank, subject to prior approval of Cabinet and Parliament,” Dr Forson said, emphasising the policy’s commitment to transparency and robust governance.
He stated that the comprehensive measures would ensure “strict enforcement of commitments by large-scale mining firms, local value retention, transparency, good governance in acquisition and cost reduction.”
Beyond gold, the policy integrates structural reforms aimed at expanding foreign exchange inflows and reducing persistent outflows.
The Finance Minister mentioned scaling up non-traditional exports; revitalising cocoa productivity; implementing the national policy on integrated oil palm development; accelerating new oil field developments such as Pecan, and conserving foreign exchange through a Gas-to-Power Transformation Policy.
Rationale for reserve build-up
Dr Forson said the policy was informed by the country’s cycle of economic downturns, recent macroeconomic developments, global risk assessments, and Ghana’s long term economic transformation agenda.
Given the uncertainties, the Finance Minister said the conventional threshold of three months of import cover was no longer adequate.
“The government, therefore, seeks to accumulate a strategic buffer beyond the conventional reserve adequacy levels and build an economic war chest of 15 months of import cover by the end of 2028,” Dr Forson said.
He told Parliament that the policy was built on the decisive macroeconomic turnaround achieved in 2025 after the 2022–2023 crisis.
Dr Forson pointed to key indicators at the end of 2025 to include real gross domestic product (GDP) growth averaging 6.1 per cent in the first three quarters of 2025; inflation declining sharply from 23.8 per cent in 2024 to 5.4 per cent, and further to 3.8 per cent in January 2026; the 91-day Treasury bill rate falling from 27.7 per cent at end-2024 to 6.4 per cent in February 2026, and public debt declining from 61.8 per cent of GDP to 45.3 per cent.
Gross international reserves also rose to $13.8 billion, equivalent to 5.7 months of import cover, up from four months in 2024.
Dr Forson stressed that the ambitious target was essential “to save the macroeconomic stability, break the cycle of economic downturns, sustain confidence in the currency, and improve on investor confidence.”
The innovation, he added, would enable the country to accumulate vital reserves “without increasing public debt or introducing distortions into the domestic market.”
“Mr Speaker, historically Ghana has relied heavily on inflows from gold, cocoa and crude oil exports to build international reserves.
However, over the last decade, the country has relied largely on costly swaps, sale and buy-backs and other short-term facilities as well as Eurobond borrowings to build international reserves, resulting in significant debt service obligations,” he stated.
Those developments in the last decade, Dr Forson said, led to the unsustainable debt situation in 2022, the resultant debt default and restructuring and subsequent request for an International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme in May 2023.
He added that despite cocoa’s historical importance, its contribution to sustained foreign exchange stability had been undermined by price volatility, low productivity, climate change risks and limited value addition.
Majority
Contributing to the statement, the Majority Leader, Mahama Ayariga, said the policy was a significant national intervention.
He urged members to focus on its long-term benefits, adding that although there might have been previous attempts to build reserves, the policy was the first time a coherent policy document had been formally presented to Parliament for consideration and approval.
“This policy is simply to deal with the problem of a rainy day,” he said, explaining that the country must take advantage of the current high gold prices to build buffers for the future.
The Bawku Central Member of Parliament (MP) argued that similar foresight during previous commodity booms, particularly in cocoa, could have provided a cushion when prices later declined.
MP for Bolgatanga Central, Isaac Adongo, dismissed claims that $10 billion had been pumped into the economy to stabilise the cedi.
“We inherited a reserve of $8 billion. As we speak, we ended the year 2025 with a reserve position of $13 billion. How do you pump $10 billion out of $8 billion and end the year with $13 billion,” he asked.
The Finance Committee Chairman explained that the foreign exchange used in the market was largely an intermediation of foreign exchange generated within the economy and not a depletion of reserves held at the Bank of Ghana.
Mr Adongo, however, acknowledged that building reserves through gold accumulation would come at a cost, particularly in mopping up excess liquidity, and called for a national conversation on sharing that cost.
Minority
The Minority Leader, Alexander Afenyo-Markin, for his part, criticised the Finance Minister for focusing on macroeconomic indicators while, in his view, failing to address pressing issues such as unemployment, electricity tariffs and cocoa producer prices.
“We are not managing an economy to talk about numbers that have no direct correlation and benefit to the ordinary people on the streets of Accra,” he said.
He contended that electricity tariffs had increased significantly, and that cocoa farmers were worse off, alleging that the producer price had been reduced.
“What we demand from you, Mr Finance Minister, is to immediately restore the producer price of cocoa that you came to meet. If you cannot increase it, don’t reduce it,” he said.
The MP for Tano North, Dr Gideon Boako, said while the Minority supported efforts to strengthen the country’s reserves, the policy was not entirely new.
He recalled that between 2021 and 2022, the Bank of Ghana embarked on a domestic gold purchase programme and a gold-for-reserves initiative, which he said contributed to anchoring the currency.
“It is important that we agree that Ghana, where we have gotten to, needs to accumulate enough reserves to anchor our currency and protect safeguards for the economy,” he said.
He also called for clarity on whether the country was moving entirely towards gold reserves or maintaining a balance between gold and foreign exchange reserves, adding that “It is not clear from the minister’s policy presentation whether or not we are moving strictly to 100 per cent accumulation of gold or 100 per cent accumulation of foreign exchange reserves, or we are having a balancing of the two.”
The Speaker of Parliament, Alban Bagbin, referred the policy statement to the Finance Committee of the House for further consideration, saying it went beyond the usual scope of statements made on the floor.
The Speaker further said that where approval or disapproval was required, the matter must properly come before the House by a motion.
“Without doing that, it has to come by motion,” he added.
He called on the Committee on Economy and Development to join the Finance Committee to submit the report for adoption by the House, which was later done in the day.
