Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod), Sammy Gyamfi, has challenged Minority Leader Alexander Afenyo-Markin to produce evidence from an International Monetary Fund (IMF) report showing that GoldBod was responsible for losses incurred by the Bank of Ghana (BoG) under the Domestic Gold Purchase Programme (DGPP).
Mr Gyamfi said claims by the Minority that the IMF had linked GoldBod to the reported losses were misleading and challenged Mr Afenyo-Markin to identify the exact portion of the report that supports the assertion.
“I challenge Afenyo-Markin to point to any page, paragraph, sentence, phrase, or punctuation mark in the said reference reports of the IMF where the GoldBod was accused by the IMF as the entity responsible for losses incurred by the Bank of Ghana,” he said.
His comments follow renewed criticism from the Minority in Parliament over the financial implications of the DGPP.
At a press conference on Tuesday, August 18, Mr Afenyo-Markin argued that GoldBod should be held accountable for what he described as a “structural bleeding” of public funds.
He maintained that although GoldBod’s audited accounts may show a surplus, some significant transaction costs associated with the programme were absorbed by the Bank of Ghana and therefore did not appear directly in GoldBod’s accounts.
The Minority Leader also questioned the commercial rationale for the reported losses and insisted that the matter required further scrutiny.
He subsequently announced that the Minority had filed a motion in Parliament seeking to compel GoldBod management to account for the losses when the House resumes.
However, Mr Gyamfi said the opposition’s argument had shifted from accusing GoldBod of making losses to claiming that the institution was responsible for losses recorded by the central bank.
“Their position has now conveniently changed from the old false narrative that the Gold Board made losses to the new false narrative, which is that the Gold Board is responsible for losses incurred by the Bank of Ghana under the domestic gold purchase program,” he said.
“Ladies and gentlemen, nothing could be further from the truth.”
IMF report
According to Mr Gyamfi, the IMF’s findings indicate that the Bank of Ghana incurred losses through gold sales under the DGPP, rather than identifying GoldBod as the institution responsible for those losses.
He said the IMF put the losses at approximately $400 million in 2024 and $1.7 billion in 2025, with the latter figure linked to the expansion of the Domestic Gold Purchase Programme.
Mr Gyamfi stressed that the IMF’s reference to the losses should not be interpreted as a finding that GoldBod had mismanaged the programme.
“That loss was as a result of the scaling up, the expansion of the programme,” he said.
He further explained that GoldBod was mentioned in the IMF’s assessment because fees paid to the institution formed part of the components of the losses recorded by the Bank of Ghana.
“This is the true context within which the name of the Gold Board featured relative to losses under the DGPP,” he said.
Mr Gyamfi argued that the inclusion of GoldBod-related fees among the components of the BoG’s reported losses was fundamentally different from the IMF accusing GoldBod of causing the overall losses.
He accused political opponents of repeatedly citing the IMF report without directing the public to the specific passages on which their claims were based.
“Most of the time, they come in the media, and they say the IMF has said that GoldBod has made a loss of $1.7 billion, and nobody questions them to point out which part of the IMF report said that,” he said.
“They say that the IMF says that GoldBod is the reason for the loss, and nobody questions them to provide proof, and we are all talking about the IMF report.”
Mr Gyamfi therefore called on those making claims about the IMF’s findings to quote the relevant sections of the report to enable the public to properly assess the basis of their arguments.
