GoldBod Not Responsible for BoG’s $1.7bn DGPP Losses — Sammy Gyamfi
The Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod), Sammy Gyamfi, has dismissed claims linking the Board to losses recorded by the Bank of Ghana under its Domestic Gold Purchase Programme (DGPP), insisting that GoldBod cannot be held responsible for sale-related losses incurred by the central bank.
Responding to allegations that GoldBod participated in the purchase and aggregation of gold for the Bank of Ghana in 2025 and is therefore responsible for reported losses, Gyamfi said GoldBod’s role was simply a continuation of the inherited role of the defunct Precious Minerals Marketing Company (PMMC) under a Gold Purchase Agreement signed with the Bank of Ghana in September 2023, where PMMC served as a gold buying agent.
He explained that the role was limited to the purchase of gold for the Bank on agreed terms and that PMMC/GoldBod fulfilled this obligation in strict accordance with the contract and fully accounted for all advances given in 2025, totalling about GH₵133 billion.
According to him, PMMC/GoldBod had no role in the sale of gold by the Bank of Ghana, was not a signatory to off-take agreements under the DGPP in 2025, and was not involved in determining selling price or sale terms.
He argued that in commodity trading, profit is a function of selling price minus cost and that since the IMF itself states that reported losses stemmed from the sale of gold by the Bank, an entity with no role in sales cannot be responsible for losses from sales.
He further questioned that the IMF reports show the Bank incurred a loss of $400 million from gold sales in 2024 when there was no GoldBod, and noted that from January to May 2025 the Bank also used a private aggregator, Redsapphire, to aggregate gold under the programme.
On the allegation that fees paid to GoldBod as buying agent caused the losses, Mr Gyamfi described the claim as ridiculous and betraying a lack of understanding.
He said the fees in question were an Assay Fee of 0.258% and a Service Fee of 0.5%, totalling 0.758%, which constitutes less than 1% of the reported 17% loss cited by the IMF.
He explained that the Assay Fee is not free money but the standard fee charged by PMMC/GoldBod as the National Assayer, approved by Parliament under the Fees and Charges Act to cover assay services and serve as an Internally Generated Fund, and paid by all gold exporters between 2022 and 2025, whether private or public, including the Bank of Ghana and MIIF.
The Service Fee of 0.5%, he added, was the same fee paid to PMMC and all other aggregators of the Bank under the DGPP in 2023, 2024 and 2025 to cover transportation, logistics, security, insurance, trade margins and smelting losses incurred through aggregation of gold from the 13 mining regions.
Addressing the claim that losses largely stemmed from the spread between the forex bureau rate paid to purchase gold and the cedi reference rate used for Bank of Ghana accounting, Mr. Gyamfi said the September 2023 Gold Purchase Agreement and its addendum provide for the price and exchange rate at which gold is to be bought by PMMC/GoldBod as buying agent and that a buying agent cannot vary agreed terms without consequences.
He challenged the Minority Leader to disclose at what price and exchange rate gold was bought by buying agents such as PMMC and Redsapphire in the years preceding GoldBod from 2022 to 2024, noting that in some cases PMMC bought gold at exchange rates around GHS16 to GHS17 to a dollar in 2024 as agent for the Bank.
He said the IMF itself attributes the chunk of reported losses to the spread between the forex bureau rate and the Bank reference rate, describing it as valuation effects, which was how artisanal and small-scale mining gold was purchased under the DGPP from 2022 to 2024.
On the assertion that reported losses stemmed from GoldBod’s trade model and that the programme was implemented through GoldBod in 2025, he clarified that although GoldBod was established in April 2025, it was not until March 2026 that it commenced implementation of its trade model envisaged under the Ghana Gold Board Act 2025 (Act 1140) because it received its revolving seed trade capital as late as 30th December 2025 and had to put in place necessary institutional measures.
He said the trade model implemented in 2025 was evidently the DGPP model of the Bank introduced in 2021.
Regarding claims of hidden off-take discounts determined by GoldBod, Mr Gyamfi said PMMC/GoldBod was only a buying agent whose role ended at buying gold for the Bank and had no role in selling gold or signing off-take agreements and therefore could not determine discounts.
He noted that off-take discounts are a standard feature of gold doré trades and that the Bank reduced discounts from about 2.2% in 2023/2024 to about 1.2% in 2025.
He also dismissed claims that GoldBod has sold gold and made losses, describing it as rich coming from a person under whose watch, as Board Chair of the Electricity Company of Ghana, a colossal loss of GHS8.2 billion was posted in 2024, and maintained that GoldBod has not incurred trading losses.
On why the Bank of Ghana pulled out of financing GoldBod, he said the Bank never financed GoldBod in the first place, as funds advanced from January 2025 to February 2026 were for its own gold purchases.
He explained that subsequent to March 2026, GoldBod only received funding for artisanal and small-scale mining purchases under the Bank’s FX Intermediation Program and Forex Sale Agreement, which was a partnership.
He said Baseline GANRAP Implementation Cost was paid by the Bank from March to June 2026 in accordance with agreements, with responsibility shifting to the Ministry of Finance in July 2026, describing it as a transfer of responsibility and not evidence of wrongdoing.
Effective August 2026, he said GoldBod indicated it will raise funds for its purchases on its own without the Bank serving as intermediary, with a pilot already successfully conducted, adding that under Section 18 of Act 1140 GoldBod is empowered to raise its own funds and that ongoing changes are a product of a policy shift from DGPP to GoldBod’s trade model.
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