Member of Parliament for Akyem Oda and former Deputy Minister of Health, Alexander Akwasi Acquah, has questioned the insistence by members of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC) that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) report must explicitly mention the Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod) before they accept that gold trading contributed to a reported GH¢22 billion financial loss.
Mr Acquah’s comments come amid an escalating political dispute between the government and the Minority in Parliament over the financial implications of the Domestic Gold Purchase Programme and the operations of GoldBod.
In a statement shared on Facebook, the Akyem Oda MP questioned why an explicit reference to GoldBod in the IMF report should be the determining factor in establishing whether the country incurred losses associated with gold trading.
“Ah so why do our friends in NDC want the IMF report to mention GoldBod explicitly, before they accept that it was the trading in gold that made us to incur a loss of 22 billion Ghana Cedis?” he wrote.
His remarks follow a rebuttal by GoldBod Chief Executive Officer, Sammy Gyamfi, who has rejected claims by the Minority Caucus that the state-owned gold trading institution incurred or caused a GH¢22 billion loss.
Mr Gyamfi, speaking at a press conference as part of the GoldBod Accountability Series, described the Minority’s claim as a “bare-faced lie” and argued that the IMF report did not attribute the reported financial exposure directly to GoldBod.
According to the GoldBod CEO, the IMF’s assessment relates to financial exposure and losses recorded by the Bank of Ghana (BoG), rather than losses incurred by GoldBod as an institution.
He also challenged the chronology of the Minority’s argument, pointing out that some of the transactions and losses referenced in the IMF report date back to 2024.
GoldBod, he stressed, was established in 2025 and therefore could not be held responsible for transactions undertaken before its creation.
The disagreement has centred largely on the structure of the domestic gold purchasing arrangements and the financial implications of gold transactions conducted under the broader programme.
Mr Gyamfi explained that during the initial stages of the programme, GoldBod operated primarily as a buying agent and did not independently determine the prices at which gold was purchased or the discounts applied to offtake transactions.
He therefore argued that attributing the reported financial losses directly to GoldBod oversimplifies a more complex set of transactions involving other state institutions and financial arrangements.
The GoldBod CEO further sought to defend the institution’s financial performance by citing figures from its 2025 unaudited management accounts.
According to him, GoldBod generated more than GH¢960 million in revenue during the period, while its expenditure remained below GH¢120 million.
He said the figures indicated that the institution was on course to record a significant income surplus rather than the massive loss being alleged by the Minority.
Mr Gyamfi has also dismissed moves by Minority Leader Alexander Afenyo-Markin to summon GoldBod officials to Parliament, challenging the Minority to subject the institution’s accounts and operations to formal parliamentary scrutiny instead.
He urged the Minority Leader to invite him to appear before Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC), where he said he was prepared to provide the relevant financial records and transaction data.
Mr Gyamfi maintained that such a process would provide an appropriate platform for the institution to respond to allegations concerning its finances and operations rather than relying on political statements.
However, Mr Acquah’s intervention suggests that the controversy is unlikely to end with GoldBod’s rebuttal, as the Minority continues to demand clarity on the financial consequences of the government’s gold purchasing and reserves strategy.
The Minority has insisted that the reported GH¢22 billion loss identified in relation to the gold transactions represents a financial cost to the Republic and should therefore be accounted for, irrespective of which state institution carried the exposure on its books.
The emerging debate is consequently shifting from whether the IMF documented a loss to which institution should bear responsibility for the loss, the period in which the transactions occurred, and how the financial exposure should ultimately be accounted for.
With both sides maintaining opposing interpretations of the IMF assessment, pressure is mounting for Parliament and the relevant state institutions to provide a comprehensive breakdown of the transactions, including the entities involved, pricing arrangements, offtake discounts and the period over which the reported losses accumulated.
By 1960news.com
