By Elsie Appiah-Osei
Accra, Aug 18, GNA — The New Patriotic Party Minority Caucus in Parliament has urged the Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod) to give a full account of alleged losses tied to its gold trading operations.
The Caucus also argued that the institution could not claim foreign exchange gains while disowning the costs that came with them, saying, “You Can’t Take the Credit and Dodge the Cost”.
Addressing the press in Parliament House, Accra, on Tuesday, Mr Alexander Kwamana Afenyo-Markin, the Minority Leader, cited a recent August 2025 International Monetary Fund (IMF) report that stated that the Bank of Ghana’s (BoG) Domestic Gold Purchase Programme, implemented through GoldBod, recorded alleged losses of over $1.7 billion—equivalent to 1.5 per cent of Ghana’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Mr Afenyo-Markin, also the New Patriotic Party (NPP) Member of Parliament (MP) for Effutu, questioned the transparency of GoldBod’s operations, particularly its fee structures and discounted gold sales.
“So, here is a question GoldBod must answer. If every one of those services, service fees, and asset fees were collected and kept, why should the losses that came bundled with earning them belong to someone else?” he asked.
“You do not get to keep the fees and disown the cost. This is not accounting; that is convenient,” he added.
The Minority Leader accused GoldBod of allegedly taking credit for foreign exchange generated from its operations while remaining silent on the losses linked to the same trades.
“GoldBod is happy to take credit for the foreign exchange it claims to have generated. But it goes quiet the moment we ask about the very trade, the discounted sales, and the fee arrangement that produced that forex in the first place,” he said.
“You cannot claim the upside of a trade and disown the downside,” he stressed.
Mr Afenyo-Markin demanded that GoldBod disclose the identities of its off-takers and explain the rationale behind the alleged discounted gold sales.
He also raised concerns over the funding arrangement with the BoG.
“GoldBod took Bank of Ghana’s money to assay gold and collect its fees. It cannot claim the credit that comes with the revenue while pushing every loss into the Bank of Ghana’s balance sheets,” he said.
According to the Minority Leader, the current structure has separated benefits from risks, leaving the central bank and the Ghanaian taxpayer to bear the losses.
“We, the Minority, are not here to relegate the profit of GoldBod. The profit GoldBod has published is in its own account. We are here because of what happened off the books—the operations, the fee structures, and the discounted sales that made that profit possible in the first place,” he added.
The Minority, therefore, demanded that GoldBod provide a comprehensive breakdown of its operations, including the full cost of purchasing, pricing, sales decisions, and the entities that benefited from the transactions.
Mr Afenyo-Markin warned that without transparency, public trust in the institution’s mandate to stabilise the cedi and build reserves will continue to erode.
GNA
Edited by Linda Asante Agyei
Reporter: Elsie Appiah-Osei, GNA
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