By Alex Ababio
The GW Fact Check investigation examines the controversial US$1.7 billion loss linked to Ghana’s Domestic Gold Purchase Programme, going beyond competing claims by GoldBod, the Bank of Ghana and the political opposition. Drawing on IMF reports, official financial documents and independent evidence, the investigation traces how the losses accumulated, separates accounting and foreign-exchange valuation effects from genuine economic costs, and asks the critical question: who ultimately bears responsibility for the financial burden placed on Ghana and its taxpayers
Independent verdict
The evidence does not support the claim that GoldBod alone “lost” or “caused” US$1.7 billion of taxpayers’ money.
But Sammy Gyamfi’s defence is also incomplete if it is interpreted to mean that GoldBod had no responsibility whatsoever for the financial losses.
My independent finding is:
The principal responsibility lies with the design, authorisation, scaling and risk-management of the Bank of Ghana’s Domestic Gold Purchase Programme (DGPP), not with GoldBod as a standalone corporate entity. However, GoldBod became a contributing participant in the loss-making structure in 2025 through its role as buying agent, fee recipient and participant in the gold-trading/offtake chain.
More importantly, the US$1.7 billion should not be described simply as US$1.7 billion of taxpayers’ cash that disappeared. A substantial part represents quasi-fiscal/accounting losses, particularly foreign-exchange valuation effects, while some components are genuine economic/trading costs.
That distinction fundamentally changes the political argument.
1. The first problem: what exactly was the “US$1.7 billion loss”?
The most important finding from the investigation is that three different numbers have been mixed together in the political debate:
about US$214 million previously reported for part of the 2025 programme;
more than US$1.7 billion in losses associated with the scaled-up DGPP in the IMF’s August 2026 analysis;
and a broader figure of about US$2.2 billion cited in discussion of the DGPP’s impact on the Bank of Ghana.
These figures are not necessarily contradictory because they refer to different measures/components of the programme.
The IMF’s August 2026 Selected Issues paper says the DGPP generated substantial losses for the Bank of Ghana and exposed the central bank to quasi-fiscal risks.
The more detailed reporting of the IMF’s Country Report No. 26/213 says the significant scaling-up of DGPP operations in 2025 produced losses exceeding US$1.7 billion, equivalent to about 1.5% of GDP. The losses were almost entirely associated with Gold-for-Reserves doré transactions and amounted to roughly 17% of the value of doré gold sold by BoG.
That is a very serious financial problem.
But it is not equivalent to saying US$1.7 billion in cash was stolen, transferred to GoldBod officials or simply vanished from the Treasury.
2. The programme existed four years before GoldBod
This is where Sammy Gyamfi has a strong factual argument.
The Bank of Ghana launched the Domestic Gold Purchase Programme in June 2021 under then-Governor Dr Ernest Addison.
The stated objective was to purchase domestic gold and convert it into monetary gold to strengthen Ghana’s international reserves. The original programme was explicitly presented as a change in the Bank’s reserve-management strategy.
Therefore:
2021–2024 DGPP losses cannot logically be assigned to GoldBod.
GoldBod did not exist in its present statutory form during those years.
The IMF’s 2025 review itself confirms that the DGPP was significantly scaled up in 2024, when gross proceeds from domestic gold purchases reached about US$2.8 billion, alongside approximately US$800 million accumulated in physical gold.
So the financial story predates the Mahama administration and predates GoldBod.
That is a major weakness in any political narrative that treats the entire DGPP loss as a GoldBod creation.
3. But this does NOT completely exonerate the current administration
This is where the GoldBod defence becomes too broad.
The Mahama administration inherited the DGPP, but it dramatically expanded and institutionalised the gold-buying strategy in 2025.
The 2025 Budget allocated the cedi equivalent of US$279 million as a revolving fund for GoldBod, with an objective of purchasing and exporting at least three tonnes of gold weekly from small-scale miners.
GoldBod was established by Parliament in April 2025.
The IMF subsequently described GoldBod as the central institution overseeing the purchase, trade and export of ASM gold, while noting that its business model involved fees for gold purchases conducted on behalf of clients including the Bank of Ghana.
And the scale became enormous.
By 2025, approximately 104 tonnes of ASM gold worth about US$10.9 billion had passed through the programme, according to reporting based on the IMF assessment.
So there is an important distinction:
GoldBod did not create the original DGPP.
But:
GoldBod became an important operational component of the dramatically enlarged 2025 version of it.
4. The strongest evidence against the “GoldBod caused $1.7bn” claim
The strongest evidence is actually GoldBod’s own audited financial statements.
GoldBod’s published 2025 audited accounts report:
GH¢5.55 billion revenue;
GH¢909.71 million operational surplus;
GH¢5.44 billion overall surplus;
GH¢970.76 million non-tax revenue;
GH¢109.58 million expenditure;
GH¢9.55 billion total assets;
GH¢5.60 billion net assets.
The Auditor-General’s audit reportedly gave GoldBod an unqualified opinion, with no adverse finding against the institution’s 2025 financial statements.
That makes the Minority’s formulation — “GoldBod lost US$1.7 billion” — financially misleading.
GoldBod’s corporate accounts did not show a US$1.7 billion loss.
The Bank of Ghana’s balance sheet absorbed the DGPP losses.
Indeed, GoldBod’s 2025 accounts show that it owed BoG approximately GH¢3.78 billion under the DGPP at year-end.
That is extremely important.
It means the financial architecture was essentially:
BoG → finances/absorbs principal risk → GoldBod/other intermediaries → purchase/aggregation → gold/offtake/reserves.
Therefore, asking why the loss appears on the BoG balance sheet is legitimate.
But saying that the loss therefore equals GoldBod’s corporate loss is not.
5. Where the Minority has a legitimate point
The Minority’s argument should not simply be dismissed.
Alexander Afenyo-Markin’s strongest question is not:
“Why did GoldBod lose US$1.7 billion?”
That formulation is technically weak.
His stronger question is:
Why was the Bank of Ghana carrying the financial risk of a commercial gold-trading operation while intermediaries earned fees from the transactions?
That is a legitimate public-finance question.
The IMF itself raised essentially this concern.
In its 2025 review, the Fund said:
“Losses from the DGPP and GoldBod’s activities should not be borne by the central bank”
and recommended that such losses be transparently brought onto the budget.
That is perhaps the most damaging piece of evidence for the government’s broader defence.
Because it means the IMF is not merely saying:
“GoldBod made no loss.”
It is saying:
“The institutional arrangement under which the central bank bears these risks is itself problematic.”
6. What actually generated the losses?
This is the heart of the forensic analysis.
The IMF identifies several components.
A. Exchange-rate differential
This appears to be the largest component.
Gold was purchased using rates that reflected the forex bureau/market environment, while BoG’s accounting used its reference exchange rate.
The IMF found that the exchange-rate differential generated substantial losses.
This is crucial because it means a significant portion of the headline loss is not necessarily a conventional “bought for $100, sold for $83” commercial loss.
It can arise from how the central bank valued the transaction in cedi and foreign-currency terms.
That is why the IMF cautioned that some of the accounting losses reflected valuation effects rather than economic costs.
So calling the entire US$1.7 billion “taxpayers’ money lost” is analytically too crude.
B. GoldBod service and assay fees
Here the Minority has a point.
The IMF specifically identified service and assay fees as contributors.
The documented rates cited in the IMF-related material were:
0.5% service fee
0.258% assay fee
Combined: 0.758%.
But Sammy Gyamfi is also correct about something important:
0.758% cannot mathematically explain a 17% loss.
Even if GoldBod collected the entire 0.758%, that is nowhere near the headline 17%.
So the argument:
“GoldBod charged fees, therefore GoldBod caused the US$1.7 billion loss”
doesn’t stand up.
The fees are a component, not the principal explanation.
7. The really troubling issue: gold was being purchased too expensively
This is where the investigation becomes much more serious.
The IMF noted that survey evidence indicated Ghana’s artisanal and small-scale gold purchase prices were among the highest in the region.
That raises a fundamental commercial question:
Was Ghana effectively overpaying to bring gold into the formal system?
If the state buys gold at a price materially above the economic value it can recover through international sales, somebody bears that difference.
In this case, the Bank of Ghana did.
That is a genuine economic cost, not merely an accounting entry.
And it cannot simply be dismissed by saying:
“GoldBod made a profit.”
The appropriate question is:
Who earned the margin and who carried the risk?
That is precisely why the Minority is justified in demanding disclosure of:
purchase prices;
assay results;
off-taker identities;
selling prices;
discounts;
fees;
commissions;
hedging arrangements;
FX rates used;
and contractual allocation of risk.
The public cannot properly assess the efficiency of the programme without these transaction-level data.
8. The biggest weakness in the GoldBod defence
GoldBod says, essentially:
“We made a surplus, therefore the US$1.7 billion cannot be attributed to us.”
That is true at the level of corporate accounting.
But it does not completely answer the economic-risk question.
Imagine a government agency earns GH¢900 million in fees from a transaction while another government institution absorbs GH¢20 billion of associated losses.
It would be wrong to say:
“Agency A lost GH¢20 billion.”
But it would also be wrong to conclude>l
“Agency A has nothing to do with the GH¢20 billion.”
The correct question becomes:
Was the fee structure appropriate for the risk being transferred to the public sector?
That is precisely the question that remains unanswered.
9. There is an even bigger problem: the Bank of Ghana itself chose the model
This is perhaps the most important finding.
The DGPP was a Bank of Ghana policy initiative.
It was launched by the central bank in 2021.
The Bank determined the reserve-management architecture.
The Bank decided to purchase gold with cedis.
The Bank assumed the balance-sheet risk.
The Bank expanded its gold holdings dramatically.
By October 2025, BoG gold holdings had exceeded 40 tonnes, and gold represented approximately 42% of gross international reserves. The new BoG Governor, Dr Johnson Asiama, subsequently acknowledged the concentration risk and undertook reserve rebalancing.
That tells us something fundamental:
The central bank was not a passive victim of GoldBod. It was the principal financial institution designing and carrying the reserve-acquisition strategy.
Therefore, primary institutional responsibility for the financial architecture rests with BoG and the government policy framework surrounding it, not simply with GoldBod.
10. Who should ultimately answer for the loss?
I would divide responsibility into four levels.
Level 1 — Primary responsibility: DGPP policy designers and risk managers
Bank of Ghana + successive government policymakers.
The programme was conceived in 2021 and expanded substantially before GoldBod existed.
The Bank had responsibility for:
programme design;
pricing methodology;
FX treatment;
reserve management;
risk management;
accounting;
transaction structure;
and deciding how much gold to accumulate.
The evidence strongly supports assigning primary institutional responsibility here.
Level 2 — Significant responsibility: 2025 policy expansion
The 2025 government cannot completely escape responsibility.
It created GoldBod, established a much more ambitious national gold-purchasing architecture and pushed formalisation and reserve accumulation to a much larger scale.
The government itself presented GoldBod as a central mechanism for generating foreign exchange and strengthening reserves.
Therefore, the Mahama administration bears responsibility for the decision to scale and institutionalise the programme, even though it did not originate the DGPP.
Level 3 — Operational responsibility: GoldBod and other buying agents
GoldBod has some responsibility, but not responsibility for the entire US$1.7 billion.
Its role included:
aggregation;
assaying;
service provision;
facilitating purchases;
participation in the trading chain;
charging fees.
The IMF explicitly recognised GoldBod-related fees as one component of the loss structure.
Therefore, “GoldBod had absolutely nothing to do with the loss” would also be inaccurate.
Level 4 — Unproven responsibility: corruption or diversion
Here we must be extremely careful.
I found no sufficient public evidence to conclude that US$1.7 billion was stolen, embezzled or diverted by GoldBod officials.
The Auditor-General’s reported clean opinion on GoldBod’s 2025 financial statements does not establish that the entire DGPP was economically efficient, but neither does the IMF report establish corruption.
So an investigative journalist should not turn “loss” into “theft” without transaction-level evidence.
11. The overlooked issue: $1.7bn is not the whole economic story
There is another reason the political debate is distorted.
The same IMF assessment says the DGPP generated substantial macroeconomic benefits.
Gold-related inflows rose dramatically, while international reserves increased and the programme helped support the cedi.
The programme was therefore not simply:
Government buys gold → government loses money.
It was:
Government buys gold → acquires reserve assets → receives FX → intervenes in FX market → supports reserves/currency → incurs substantial policy/trading/valuation costs.
The IMF’s own assessment recognises both sides: the programme helped Ghana rebuild reserves and stabilise the economy but created significant quasi-fiscal risks.
This is why the correct economic question is not:
“Was the programme a complete failure?”
It wasn’t.
The better question is:
Was the macroeconomic benefit worth the method and cost by which Ghana achieved it?
That question remains unresolved.
12. One fact that dramatically strengthens the case for investigation
In January 2026, Governor Johnson Asiama disclosed that the programme had already accumulated GHS4.893 billion in net losses for 2023–2024, comprising GHS1.054 billion in 2023 and GHS3.893 billion in 2024, while 2025 figures were still under audit at that point.
He called for reforms and said the costs should be captured in the national budget rather than continuing to sit entirely on the central bank’s balance sheet.
That is extremely revealing.
It demonstrates that:
the financial problem was already present before the current controversy over the US$1.7 billion.
It also demonstrates that the issue is structural rather than merely political.
13. The IMF’s recommendation is perhaps the definitive clue
The IMF has effectively suggested that Ghana should stop treating the central bank as the institution that silently absorbs the cost.
Its recommendation is to:
improve transparency;
improve governance;
improve risk management;
bring losses transparently onto the budget;
and reduce the Bank of Ghana’s exposure.
That is a very significant finding.
It means the real problem is quasi-fiscal policy hidden inside central-bank operations.
And that is dangerous because central-bank losses ultimately have consequences for taxpayers even when they don’t initially appear as a direct budget expenditure.
14. My final independent verdict
On Sammy Gyamfi’s claim
Verdict: substantially correct, but incomplete.
He is correct that:
GoldBod did not create the DGPP;
the programme began in 2021;
GoldBod did not exist when the earlier losses occurred;
GoldBod’s audited 2025 accounts did not show a US$1.7 billion corporate loss;
the IMF did not simply write “GoldBod lost US$1.7 billion”;
exchange-rate valuation effects were a major component;
fees alone could not explain the headline loss.
But he goes too far if his defence is understood as meaning GoldBod bears no responsibility for the economics of the transactions.
GoldBod was part of the operational chain and received fees. The IMF specifically identifies GoldBod-related fees among the costs and says the DGPP and GoldBod-related losses should not ultimately be borne by the central bank.
On the Minority’s accusation
Verdict: politically overstated, but financially legitimate in its demand for accountability.
The Minority is wrong to simplify the IMF finding into:
“GoldBod lost US$1.7 billion.”
That is not what the IMF said.
But the Minority is justified in asking:
Why did BoG carry enormous financial risk while intermediaries collected fees and why were gold purchases and offtake transactions structured in a way that generated such large losses?
That is a legitimate forensic question.
The real culprit: my ranking
If I were writing this as an independent financial investigator, I would rank responsibility this way:
Actor Responsibility My assessment
Bank of Ghana / DGPP architecture Highest Designed, financed, accounted for and absorbed the programme’s financial risks
Successive governments/policymakers High Approved, supported and expanded the quasi-fiscal reserve strategy
2025 government / GoldBod policy expansion Significant Dramatically expanded and institutionalised the gold-purchase model
GoldBod Partial/operational Participated in transactions and received fees, but did not carry the entire loss
Private aggregators/off-takers Potentially significant Their margins, discounts and pricing require transaction-level investigation
Taxpayers Ultimate risk bearer Ultimately exposed because BoG losses weaken public-sector finances
Corruption/theft Not established No adequate public evidence presently proves that the US$1.7bn was stolen
Bottom line
I would not publish the headline “GoldBod caused Ghana’s US$1.7bn loss.”
I also would not publish:
“GoldBod had nothing to do with the loss.”
The most defensible conclusion is:
Ghana’s US$1.7 billion DGPP loss was primarily the consequence of a central-bank-led reserve accumulation strategy whose rapid expansion created major trading, pricing, foreign-exchange and valuation costs. GoldBod was an important operational participant and contributed some identifiable costs, but the available evidence does not support blaming GoldBod alone—or treating the US$1.7 billion as US$1.7 billion of taxpayers’ cash simply lost. The deeper accountability question is why the Bank of Ghana was allowed to carry the risks of a quasi-fiscal gold-trading operation for years without those risks being transparently budgeted and properly allocated.
And there is one investigation I would pursue next
The US$1.7 billion should be reconstructed transaction-by-transaction.
The critical documents are:
1. Every GoldBod–BoG purchase agreement.
2. All 2025 Gold-for-Reserves contracts.
3. The identity of every major off-taker.
4. Gold purchase price versus LBMA/spot price on each transaction.
5. Forex-bureau rate used versus BoG reference rate.
6. Every discount granted to off-takers.
7. Every GoldBod service/assay fee.
8. Refining and transportation costs.
9. Gold weight and assay results.
10. Sale price received for each batch.
11. The contractual party that bore price/FX risk.
12. BoG’s complete DGPP ledger for 2021–2025.
13. The external audit of the DGPP now being conducted.
14. The July 2026 BoG–GoldBod–Government MoU transferring the programme.
15. The identities and beneficial owners of the companies receiving the gold and/or discounts.
That is where the answer to “who really lost Ghana’s money?” will ultimately be found—not in the speeches of Sammy Gyamfi or Afenyo-Markin.
The most important unresolved question is not who can claim the US$1.7 billion figure politically; it is who received the economic benefit corresponding to the costs that BoG—and ultimately the public sector—absorbed.
And the IMF itself has effectively pointed investigators in that direction by recommending greater transparency, governance and risk allocation and by warning that DGPP and GoldBod-related losses should not continue to sit on the central bank’s balance sheet.