Fact-check: GoldBod did not make loss in 2025
The latest fact-checking of the IMF document by African Editors has established that GoldBod did not make a loss in 2025. This evidence directly contradicts the claim made by Ghana’s Minority Leader, Alexander Afenyo-Markin, at a press conference that GoldBod incurred a loss during the year.
This means the Effutu MP will face an uphill task in substantiating his hearsay claim that GoldBod made a loss in 2025. His comments, in light of the available evidence, appear misleading, perverse, awkward, baseless and unsupported by the IMF document. Such claims should therefore be treated with the contempt they deserve and immediately thrown into the dustbin of misinformation.
The Claim
A press conference by Ghana’s Minority Caucus on August 18 accused the Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod) of losing more than GH₵22 billion in 2025. Minority Leader Alexander Afenyo-Markin said the figure came from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), describing the loss as equivalent to about 1.5 percent of Ghana’s GDP. The claim immediately drew a sharp response from GoldBod Chief Executive Officer Sammy Gyamfi, who dismissed it as a “barefaced lie.” Gyamfi pointed to GoldBod’s audited 2025 financial statements, which recorded a surplus rather than a loss.
So, which side is right?
A review of the two IMF documents cited by the Minority, together with GoldBod’s audited 2025 accounts, shows that the dispute is less about the figure itself than about which institution actually incurred the loss.
The GH₵22 Billion Figure Is Real
The Minority did not invent the GH₵22 billion figure.
The IMF’s Selected Issues Paper, Lessons from the Bank of Ghana’s Domestic Gold Purchase Programme (Country Report No. 26/213), states that losses from the Domestic Gold Purchase Programme (DGPP) increased from about US$400 million in 2024 to more than US$1.7 billion in 2025, equivalent to approximately 1.5 percent of GDP.
The Minority also accurately quoted paragraph 13 of the report when it identified service and assay fees paid to GoldBod, discounts on gold sold to off-takers and, most importantly, exchange-rate losses as components of the overall loss.
The numbers, therefore, are genuine and come directly from the IMF.
The crucial question is: whose loss was it?
The IMF Attributes the Loss to the Bank of Ghana
This is where the Minority’s interpretation becomes misleading.
The IMF report does not say that GoldBod lost GH₵22 billion. Instead, it explicitly says that DGPP operations generated significant losses for the Bank of Ghana (BoG).
GoldBod is mentioned in the report because it was involved in administering the programme, but the IMF does not attribute the overall loss to GoldBod’s corporate accounts.
The report identifies three major components of the loss: fees paid to GoldBod, discounts applied when gold was sold to off-takers and the exchange-rate difference between the price used to purchase gold and the exchange rate used by the Bank of Ghana for accounting purposes.
The exchange-rate component was identified as the most significant.
That distinction is central to the fact-check.
GoldBod Was Acting as a Buying Agent
GoldBod was established in April 2025 and, during the period in question, operated as a fee-earning buying agent for the Bank of Ghana’s Domestic Gold Purchase Programme. According to the accounts and programme arrangements, GoldBod received an assay fee of 0.258 percent and a service fee of 0.5 percent, giving it a combined fee of 0.758 percent.
The institution did not bear all the trading and pricing risks associated with the programme in 2025.
The programme was only transferred fully to GoldBod under a new trading arrangement in 2026, with a formal memorandum of understanding transferring the programme from the Bank of Ghana in July 2026. That means the GH₵22 billion loss recorded in connection with the 2025 DGPP cannot simply be treated as a loss incurred by GoldBod itself.
What GoldBod’s Audited Accounts Show
GoldBod’s own 2025 audited financial statements provide a different picture.
The accounts, certified by the Auditor-General with an unqualified opinion, recorded a surplus of GH₵5.44 billion for the year ended December 31, 2025.
That figure was substantially higher than the GH₵185.3 million surplus recorded in 2024.
At first glance, the figure appears to settle the argument. But there is an important qualification. GoldBod’s accounts disclose that approximately GH₵4.55 billion of the 2025 surplus represented an unutilised government capital subvention.
In other words, that amount was government funding provided to support GoldBod’s operations rather than income generated through its ordinary business activities.
GoldBod Still Recorded an Operating Surplus
Removing the government subvention does not turn GoldBod’s accounts into a loss.
GoldBod’s core operating activities generated a surplus of roughly GH₵900 million in 2025, according to the figures disclosed in its accounts. That means that even after excluding the government capital injection, GoldBod remained profitable on its own operating books.
This is an important distinction.
It would be misleading to describe the entire GH₵5.44 billion as GoldBod’s trading profit because a large portion came from the government subvention. But it is equally misleading to describe GoldBod as having made a GH₵22 billion loss. Its audited accounts show a surplus.
What the IMF Says About GoldBod
The IMF’s Sixth Review Staff Report (Country Report No. 26/212) and the Selected Issues Paper (Country Report No. 26/213) contain numerous references to GoldBod.
However, none of those references says that GoldBod itself incurred the GH₵22 billion loss.
The IMF’s attribution is to the Bank of Ghana and the DGPP.
GoldBod’s fees are identified as one component of the programme’s costs, but they are not presented as equivalent to the entire loss. This supports Sammy Gyamfi’s central rebuttal that the IMF documents do not accuse GoldBod of causing or recording the GH₵22 billion loss on its own books.
Why the Minority’s Claim Is Misleading
The Minority was right about the existence and size of the loss. It was also right that the figure appears in the IMF’s report.
Where the claim becomes misleading is in describing that amount as “GoldBod losses.”
The IMF’s figure refers to losses generated by the Bank of Ghana’s Domestic Gold Purchase Programme. GoldBod was involved in the programme and received fees for its role, but the overall loss was not recorded as a GH₵22 billion loss in GoldBod’s audited accounts.
The distinction is therefore between a loss associated with a programme GoldBod administered and a loss incurred by GoldBod as a corporate entity. They are not the same thing.
A Complication the Audit Reveals
GoldBod’s position should not, however, be interpreted to mean that the institution had no financial involvement in the programme’s costs. Its fees were explicitly identified by the IMF as one contributor to the DGPP’s overall losses.
The IMF also raised concerns about the programme’s operating costs and called for greater transparency and stronger safeguards. The report noted that programme-related costs had declined from roughly 14–15 percent of gold purchased in 2025 to around 11–12 percent by early 2026, although this remained above the stated 5 percent target.
An external audit of the DGPP from its inception was also underway, with its results expected in the third quarter of 2026. That audit could provide a fuller picture of how the programme’s losses should ultimately be apportioned among the institutions involved.
Verdict: Misleading
The Minority’s claim that GoldBod lost GH₵22 billion in 2025 is MISLEADING.
The GH₵22 billion figure is real and was correctly quoted from the IMF. The IMF reported more than US$1.7 billion in losses from the Domestic Gold Purchase Programme in 2025.
But the IMF attributes those losses to the Bank of Ghana, not to GoldBod’s own corporate accounts.
GoldBod’s audited 2025 financial statements show a surplus, including an operating surplus of roughly GH₵900 million after excluding the unutilised government subvention.
Sammy Gyamfi’s claim that the IMF did not say GoldBod incurred the GH₵22 billion loss is therefore TRUE.
The disagreement is ultimately about attribution, not arithmetic.
Bottom Line
GoldBod did not make a GH₵22 billion loss in 2025. The Bank of Ghana incurred losses of more than US$1.7 billion under the Domestic Gold Purchase Programme, a programme GoldBod administered as a paid buying agent during 2025.
The Minority’s figure is genuine, but attaching the entire loss to GoldBod’s own books misrepresents what the IMF reports and what GoldBod’s audited accounts show.
In short: the loss was real; the attribution to GoldBod was not.
