The Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod), Sammy Gyamfi, has rejected claims that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) directly attributed $1.7 billion in losses to GoldBod.
Mr Gyamfi said the IMF’s reports identified the Domestic Gold Purchase Programme (DGPP) as the source of the losses, rather than GoldBod, which was established later to assume key activities of the programme.
Speaking at the Government Accountability Series on Wednesday, August 19, he challenged commentators and fact-checkers to examine the relevant IMF reports rather than attributing statements to the Fund that, he said, were not contained in its documents.
According to Mr Gyamfi, Ghana recorded losses of approximately $400 million from gold sales under the DGPP in 2024. The losses increased to more than $1.7 billion in 2025 following a significant expansion of the programme.
He said the IMF specifically linked the 2025 losses to the scaling-up of the DGPP and identified service fees, discounts and foreign-exchange valuation effects as contributing factors.
Mr Gyamfi said public discussions surrounding the $1.7 billion figure had often suggested that the IMF directly blamed GoldBod for the losses.
He disputed that interpretation and challenged those making the claim to identify the specific passages in the IMF reports that support it.
“I want to read the relevant portions of the IMF report because, most of the time, you hear claims in the media that the IMF has said GoldBod made a loss of $1.7 billion. Yet nobody questions which part of the IMF report actually says that,” he said.
“They say the IMF has stated that GoldBod is responsible for the loss, but nobody asks them to provide the evidence. We are all talking about IMF reports. Fact-checkers must get to work.”
IMF Report on Bank of Ghana
Mr Gyamfi said the first relevant document was the IMF’s recent review under Ghana’s Extended Credit Facility (ECF) programme.
He directed attention to paragraph 15 on page 27 of the report, which discusses the impact of the DGPP on the financial position of the Bank of Ghana (BoG).
According to Mr Gyamfi, the report stated that the DGPP “weighed on the financial sustainability of the BOG” and generated losses of $2.2 billion, equivalent to 1.5 per cent of Ghana’s gross domestic product (GDP), in 2025.
He stressed that the report did not attribute those losses directly to GoldBod.
Mr Gyamfi also highlighted the IMF’s reference to a government cost-sharing arrangement at the end of 2025, involving the transfer of bonds with a par value of $5 billion in March 2026.
According to the report, the transaction resulted in a breach of the ceiling on the Bank of Ghana’s claims on the central government and public entities at the end of December 2025 and again at the end of March 2026.
He also pointed to the IMF’s reference to a July 2026 memorandum of understanding between the Bank of Ghana, GoldBod and the government.
The agreement formalised the transfer of DGPP activities from the central bank to GoldBod, with the stated objective of eliminating the associated quasi-fiscal risks for the Bank of Ghana.
Mr Gyamfi said the arrangement was significant because it demonstrated that GoldBod was taking over activities that had previously been undertaken by the central bank.
He further highlighted the IMF’s disclosure that an external auditing firm was conducting a special audit of the DGPP from its inception in 2021, with the findings expected in 2026.
He said the audit would provide an independent assessment of the programme’s operations and financial implications since its establishment.
The IMF also indicated that losses associated with the DGPP, together with the high cost of open market operations and exchange-rate valuation losses arising from the appreciation of the cedi, had worsened the Bank of Ghana’s negative equity position to 6.7 per cent of GDP.
IMF Identifies Factors Behind $1.7bn Losses
Mr Gyamfi said these details were critical to distinguishing between the DGPP, the Bank of Ghana and GoldBod.
He said the second key document was the IMF’s Selected Issues report, published on August 4, which examined the DGPP and its financial impact on the central bank.
Citing paragraph 13 of the report, Mr Gyamfi said the IMF stated that the programme had generated significant losses for the Bank of Ghana.
According to him, the IMF estimated the losses in 2024 at almost $400 million, equivalent to 0.5 per cent of GDP, with approximately one-third linked to gold-for-oil purchases.
The situation worsened in 2025, he said, when the significant expansion of the DGPP resulted in losses exceeding $1.7 billion.
“The IMF therefore identifies what led to the loss: the significant scaling-up of the programme. It is stated clearly in the report,” Mr Gyamfi said.
He argued that the wording was important because the IMF identified the expansion of the programme as the factor behind the sharp increase in losses, rather than stating that GoldBod itself was responsible.
Mr Gyamfi also highlighted the IMF’s explanation of how the losses accumulated.
He said the Fund reported that the losses were almost entirely associated with gold purchases and amounted to approximately 17 per cent of the value of the gold sold by the Bank of Ghana.
According to him, the IMF attributed the losses associated with the gold purchases to service fees and discounts paid in connection with the transactions, as well as exchange-rate losses.
He described the exchange-rate effect as the most significant factor.
The losses, he explained, arose from the difference between the foreign-exchange bureau rates used to purchase the gold and the cedi reference rate applied by the Bank of Ghana for accounting purposes.
The IMF also indicated that survey data suggested prices paid for Ghanaian artisanal and small-scale gold were among the highest in the region.
Mr Gyamfi said this was significant because it showed that the reported losses could not simply be characterised as GoldBod purchasing gold and subsequently selling it at a lower price.
Valuation Effects
Another issue highlighted by Mr Gyamfi was the IMF’s qualification that some of the reported losses reflected valuation effects rather than actual economic costs.
“The IMF also noted that these accounting losses partly reflected valuation effects rather than economic costs,” he said.
He argued that this distinction was important when interpreting the headline $1.7 billion figure, particularly in public discussions about GoldBod’s financial performance.
According to Mr Gyamfi, presenting the entire amount simply as a loss caused by GoldBod risks giving the public an incomplete understanding of the financial mechanics of the DGPP.
He maintained that the IMF reports clearly linked the losses to operations under the DGPP, particularly its substantial expansion in 2025, while identifying service fees, discounts and exchange-rate valuation effects among the contributing factors.
Call for Evidence-Based Debate
Mr Gyamfi concluded by calling for greater scrutiny of claims attributed to international institutions, particularly when such claims are used to support political or public arguments.
He said the debate should be based on what the IMF had actually stated in its reports rather than interpretations presented in the media.
“Ladies and gentlemen, these are the words of the IMF. It is important that we do not attribute statements to the IMF that it has not made,” he said.
“The IMF has not said that GoldBod is responsible for causing the Bank of Ghana to lose $1.7 billion.”
Mr Gyamfi maintained that the relevant IMF reports attributed the losses to the scaling-up of the DGPP, while identifying service fees, discounts and foreign-exchange valuation effects as factors contributing to the reported financial losses.
