The Chief Executive Officer of the Gold Board, Sammy Gyamfi has refuted claims by the Minority in Parliament led by its leader, Alexander Afenyo-Markin, to the effect that his outfit has incurred losses to the tune of USD1.7 billion.
He denied the allegations during the Government Accountability Series on August 19, at the Jubilee House.
Here is the full text of the statement Mr Gyamfi read:
STATEMENT PRESENTED BY THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER OF THE GHANA GOLD BOARD (GOLDBOD), SAMMY GYAMFI, ESQ., IN RESPONSE TO BASELESS ALLEGATIONS BY ALEXANDER AFENYO-MARKIN, AT THE GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY SERIES, WEDNESDAY, 19TH AUGUST 2026.
1. Good morning, distinguished ladies and gentlemen of the press. I thank you for the opportunity afforded us, through your esteemed platforms, to engage regularly with the good people of Ghana on matters of national interest.
Your collaboration with the Ghana Gold Board (GOLDBOD) since our establishment is deeply appreciated. Our partnership has contributed significantly to the successful implementation of our mandate to create real value for the people of Ghana and maximize national benefits from the management of the country‘s gold resources.
2. Today’s engagement is simply intended to address a number of baseless allegations and deliberate falsehoods concerning the operations and financial health of the GoldBod that have been propagated by certain individuals in recent times.
Of particular concern is the persistent campaign of lies being waged by Alexander Afenyo- Markin and his ilk against the GoldBod over the past couple of months. This sustained and relentless campaign reached a reckless crescendo yesterday, at a press conference addressed by him within the precincts of Parliament.
3. Afenyo-Markin’s modus operandi, which can no longer be allowed to go unanswered, is to repeat the same tired falsehoods as often as possible and on as many platforms as he can, in the hope that repetition will somehow transform fiction into fact and mislead unsuspecting members of the public.
The GoldBod therefore deems it necessary that the record be set straight, once and for all, to prevent him and others like him from continuing to distort the remarkable performance and transformational impact of the Ghana Gold Board.
4. First, Afenyo-Markin and his ilk alleged on several occasions on the floor of Parliament and in the media, that the GoldBod made losses in its 2025 gold-trading operations. This claim is simply a barefaced lie which has been debunked time and again by the GoldBod.
The Audited Annual Report and Financial Statements of the GoldBod for the year ended December 31, 2025 prepared and published by the Auditor-General completely belies that claim, as it discloses an operational surplus/profit of GHS907 million and an overall surplus/profit of over GHS5.4 billion.
This is an incontrovertible fact.
5. Unsurprisingly, Afenyo-Markin and his followers have consciously chosen to disregard the Auditor-General’s confirmation that the GoldBod did not record an operational loss. They now claim that the Auditor-General did not have access to the full picture concerning the operations of the GoldBod.
That position betrays either a crass lack of understanding of how an external audit is conducted or a deliberate determination to undermine yet another independent state institution when its findings do not suit their mischievous narratives.
6. I invite you the media, the fourth estate of the realm to check the veracity of this claim with the Auditor-General and you will come to the conclusion that officials of the Auditor-General were given unhindered access to all relevant information in the conduct of their audit of the 2025 financials of the GoldBod.
All documents requested by them were supplied and all queries raised by them in their Management Letter were satisfactorily answered by the Management of the GoldBod. This is why not a single adverse audit finding was made by the Auditor-General in its 2025 audited report on the GoldBod.
The media must not condone or entertain the continuous propagation of lies in the face of glaring evidence to the contrary.
7. Friends from the media, after adducing the indisputable findings of the Auditor-General to puncture the lie that the GoldBod made losses in its 2025 operations, Afenyo-Markin and his associates quickly abandoned that line of attack and have now sought refuge in the recently published IMF report on the sixth and final review of Ghana’s Extended Credit Facility, in which the IMF reported that the Bank of Ghana recorded a loss of US$1.7 billion under its Domestic Gold Purchase Programme (DGPP) in 2025.
Their position has now conveniently changed from the old false narrative that the GoldBod made losses to a new false narrative that, the GoldBod is responsible for losses incurred by the Bank of Ghana under the Bank’s DGPP.
8. Ladies and gentlemen, nothing could be farther from the truth. First, nowhere in the under-referenced IMF reports is the GoldBod accused as having caused losses incurred by the Bank of the Ghana under the Bank’s DGPP. I challenge Afenyo Markin to point to any page, paragraph, sentence or phrase in the under-referenced reports of the IMF, where the GoldBod was accused as the entity responsible for losses incurred by the Bank of Ghana under the DGPP.
9. In summary, what the said IMF reports state, is that the Bank of Ghana incurred losses through the sale of gold under its DGPP of $400 million and $1.7 billion in the years 2024 and 2025 respectively.
And that the 2025 loss of $1.7 billion was a result of the “scaling-up” of the DGPP. The IMF also stated that these “accounting losses partly reflect valuation effects”. In particularizing what the IMF considers to be the components of this loss, the IMF listed three (3) things, which included fees paid to the GoldBod under the DGPP.
This is the true context within which the name of the GoldBod featured relative to losses under the DGPP in the under-referenced IMF reports.
10. Ladies and gentlemen, aside the fact that the new false narrative of Afenyo-Markin grossly misrepresents the IMF’s findings, I will demonstrate to you with facts and sound logical reasoning, that fees paid to an agent by a principal based on a contract for agreed services, cannot be reasonably said to be the reason for losses incurred by the principal.
And that the IMF mischaracterized fees paid to the GoldBod as one of the components of losses incurred by the Bank of Ghana in 2025 under the DGPP. I shall also demonstrate to you that the new false narrative of Afenyo and his followers that the GoldBod is to blame for losses incurred by the Bank of Ghana under the DGPP is bereft of fact and logic.
That fallacy is anchored on the claim that:
Claim A:
The GoldBod participated in the purchase and aggregation of gold for the Bank of Ghana under the DGPP in 2025, hence is responsible for reported losses under the program.
Answer:
- The GoldBod’s role under the DGPP in 2025 was simply a continuation of the inherited role of the defunct PMMC under the Gold Purchase Agreement with the Bank of Ghana (BoG) signed in September 2023 under which the PMMC served as a gold buying agent.
- This buying agent role was limited to only the purchase of gold for the Bank of Ghana on agreed terms. The PMMC/GoldBod fulfilled this obligation in strict accordance with its obligations under the 2023 Gold Purchase contract and fully accounted for all advances it was given in 2025, a total of about GHS133 billion.
- The PMMC/GoldBod had no role in the sale of gold by the BoG under the DGPP. It was not a signatory to off-take agreements under the DGPP in 2025. Neither was it involved in determining selling price or sale terms.
- In commodity trading, profit is simply a function of selling price minus cost. The IMF states that the reported losses stemmed from the sale of gold by the Bank of Ghana, not the PMMC/Goldbod.
- If the PMMC/GoldBod had no role in the sale of gold it purchased for the BoG, then it cannot be said to be responsible for losses incurred through the sale of gold by the BoG, simply because it bought gold for the BoG as a buying agent on agreed terms.
- In any case, the under-referenced IMF reports state that the BoG incurred a loss of $400 million from gold sales under the DGPP in the year 2024. Ladies and gentlemen, there was no GoldBod in the year 2024.
- Who then caused that loss? Can Afenyo-Markin answer this simple question? Was it the buying agents at the time? Redsapphire or the PMMC? Also, in 2025, the Bank of Ghana used a private aggregator, called Redsapphire to aggregate gold under the DGPP from January to May.
- Is Afenyo saying that, the private company, is responsible for losses incurred by the BoG under the DGPP in 2025? Ladies and gentlemen, I believe that the paucity of logic in Afenyo’s new claim is becoming clearer to you.
Claim B:
The GoldBod was paid fees as a buying agent under the DGPP in 2025, hence is responsible for reported losses under the program. And that a business model where one entity is paid fees, but another entity absorbs losses stinks.
Answer:
- This claim is ridiculous and betrays a lack of understanding of the fees in question. The fees in question are Assay Fee of 0.258% and a Service Fee of 0.5%.
- It is instructive to note right from the outset, that the said GoldBod fees that is alleged to be the reason for BoG’s DGPP losses, constitute less than 1% of the reported 17% loss by the IMF of the value of gold purchased. It’s a paltry 0.758%.
- It must be noted that the Assay Fee of 0.258% is not free money. It is the standard fee charged by the PMMC/GoldBod as the National Assayer for its assay services. The fee is approved by Parliament under the Fees and Charges Act to cover the cost of Assay services rendered by the PMMC/GoldBod and serve as IGF for the PMMC/GoldBod.
- All gold exporters between 2022-2025, whether private or public (BoG and MIIF) or whether foreign or local paid this same assay fee of 0.258% to the national assayer before gold exports.
- The service fee of 0.5% paid the GoldBod in 2025, was the same fee paid the PMMC and all other aggregators of the BoG under the DGPP in 2023, 2024 and 2025. This fee is not free money.
- The BoG agreed to pay a service fee in the year 2023 to all its aggregators (PMMC and Redsapphire) to cover the cost of transportation, logistics, security, insurance, trade margins and smelting losses incurred through the aggregation of gold from the 13 mining regions of Ghana for the BoG by its buying agents.
- If the GoldBod is to blame for losses incurred by the BoG in 2025 because it was paid a legitimate fee for its services, who then caused the losses of the BoG in 2022, 2023 and 2024 under the same DGPP? Was it the PMMC and Redsapphire who were paid the same service fees? Afenyo should answer this question too.
- Is he saying that losses incurred by MIIF in their gold trade or any other private gold exporter, is attributable to the PMMC/GoldBod because we charged and were paid a lawful fee approved by Parliament for our assay services? Is Parliament then the cause of the losses?
- Ladies and gentlemen, are losses incurred by the COCOBOD blamed on its Licensed Buying Companies (LBCs) because they are paid a margin of 12.75% on the producer price for their services?
- Is it right for an exporter or trader or business who incurs losses to blame that on a freight forwarder or service provider, simply because of a legitimate fee paid for services rendered? Are organizations, whether private or public now to blame their service providers for losses they incur simply because of legitimate fees paid for services rendered?
- Where in the world is one body corporate, blamed for accounting losses incurred by another independent, separate and distinct body corporate, without any evidentiary basis? This argument simply defies common sense and reflects a desperation to smear the GoldBod at all costs.
- The fact remains that, these fees would have been paid by the BoG to their gold buying agents and the national assayer even if GoldBod was not established or not in existence. This cannot be the reason for reported DGPP losses.
Claim C:
The IMF says that reported losses under the DGPP in 2025 largely stemmed from the spread between the forex bureau rate paid to purchase gold and the Cedi reference rate used for BoG’s accounting. And that since the GoldBod was responsible for buying the gold for the BoG, it is responsible for reported losses under the program.
Answer:
o The September 2023 Gold Purchase Agreement between the PMMC and the
BoG and its addendum, provides for the price and exchange rate at which gold
is to be bought by the PMMC/GoldBod as buying agent.
o These are express prescriptions of the principal (BoG) captured in a signed contract that predates the GoldBod. A buying agent (PMMC/GoldBod, Redsapphire) cannot vary agreed terms in a written agreement without consequences.
o Afenyo Markin should tell Ghanaians at what price and exchange rate was gold
bought by buying agents such as the PMMC and Redsapphire in the years preceding the establishment of the GoldBod (2022-2024). I can tell you in some cases, the PMMC bought gold at exchange rates around GHS16 to GHS17 to
a dollar in 2024 as buying agent for the BoG.
o The IMF itself says that the spread between the forex bureau rate at which gold was bought and the BoG reference rate at which proceeds were translated in BoG’s books account for the chunk of reported losses. This is how ASM gold
was purchased under the DGPP from 2022-2024.
How then is Sammy Gyamfi and the GoldBod to blame for this? The IMF goes on to say that accounting losses from this exchange rate differential reflects “valuation effects” on BoG’s
books. Where then lies the claim of incompetence or mismanagement?
o Ladies and gentlemen, the fact still remains that buying agents of the BoG would have continued to buy gold at the forex bureau rate or higher in 2025 even if the GoldBod had no come into existence.
Claim D:
The reported DGPP losses stems from GoldBod’s trade model and that the program was implemented through the GoldBod in 2025.
Answer:
o Ladies and gentlemen, although the GoldBod was established in April 2025, it was not until March 2026 that it commenced the implementation of its trade model envisaged under the Ghana Gold Board Act 2025 (ACT 1140). This is because the GoldBod received its revolving seed trade capital as late as 30th December 2025. Also, the GoldBod had to put in place the necessary institutional measures and systems before take-off.
o The trade model implemented by the BoG in the year 2025 was evidently the DGPP model of the Bank of Ghana introduced in 2021. When did the DGPP become GoldBod’s model? And how can DGPP losses be said to be arising out of a GoldBod model?
Claim E:
The reported DGPP losses is partly caused by hidden offtake discounts determined by the GoldBod.
Answer:
o The PMMC/GoldBod was only a buying agent under the DGPP. Its role ended at buying gold for the BoG. It had no role in selling gold or signing offtake agreements. Therefore, it could not determine offtake discounts.
o It must however be noted that offtake discounts are a standard feature of gold doré trades. For the records, the BoG did extremely well in reducing offtake discounts from about 2.2% in 2023/2024 to about 1.2% in 2025. This is a fact that anyone can verify from the BoG and this cannot by any stretch of imagination be the reason for reported losses under the DGPP. In any case, as I have explained, the GoldBod had no role under the DGPP in the determination of offtake discounts.
OTHER FALSE CLAIMS BY AFENYO MARKIN AND HIS FOLLOWERS
Claim F:
The GoldBod has sold gold and made losses and that no one should sell gold and make losses.
Answer:
o This is very rich coming from a person under whose watch as Board Chair of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), a colossal loss of GHS8.2billion was posted in 2024. Even more interesting is that this claim is coming from the leader of a party under whose tenure, two gold trading institutions, the BoG and MIIF recorded substantial gold trading losses.
o As I have already demonstrated with uncontroverted facts, the GoldBod has not incurred any trading losses in its operations neither is it responsible for DGPP losses that are products of BoG’s DGPP policy design. The GoldBod will not take gold trading lessons from Afenyo Markin. We will not take moral lessons
from a brothel.
Claim G:
Why has the Bank of Ghana pulled out of financing the GoldBod if the GoldBod is not
making losses?
Answer:
o For the records, the BoG has not pulled out from financing the GoldBod as there was no such financing in the first place. From January 2025 to February 2026, the GoldBod served as the BoG’s gold buying agent. Funds advanced to it by the BoG cannot be said to amount to financing the GoldBod. The BoG was simply funding its gold purchases under its program.
o Subsequent to the commencement of the implementation of the GoldBod’s trading model in March 2026, the GoldBod only received funding for its ASM gold purchases under the BoG’s FX Intermediation Program and the Forex Sale
Agreement executed between the GoldBod and the Bank of Ghana. This was a partnership and not a one-sided provision of financing to the GoldBod.
o Between March to June 2026, Baseline GANRAP Implementation Cost was paid by the BoG in accordance with the Forex Sale Agreement between the BoG and the GoldBod and the GANRAP Implementation Agreement between the GoldBod and the Ministry of Finance. The responsibility for the payment of the GANRAP implementation cost shifted to the Ministry of Finance in July 2026. This is a transfer of responsibility for GANRAP Implementation Cost from the BoG to the Ministry of Finance and not evidence of wrongdoing.
o Effective August 2026, the GoldBod indicated to the BoG that it will want to raise funds for its ASM purchases on its own without the BoG serving as an intermediary. A pilot has already been successfully conducted, and a collaborative framework is being worked on between the BoG, the GoldBod and the Ministry of Finance to sustain this new arrangement.
o For emphasis, the GoldBod trade model is not anchored on BoG’s financing as Parliament gave the GoldBod to raise its own funds under Section 18, Act 1140.
o The ongoing changes to the funding framework for GoldBod’s ASM gold purchases are therefore a product of the policy shift from DGPP to the
GoldBod’s trade model and not evidence of wrongdoing.
OTHER KEY MATTERS
GOLDBOD’S OFFICIAL POSITION ON REPORTED LOSSES INCURRED BY THE BANK OF GHANA UNDER THE DGPP IN 2025
o The GoldBod’s defense of its financial performance for the year 2025 should not be misconstrued as an effort to shift blame for DGPP losses to the BoG. As we have stated on public record, DGPP losses over the years stemmed from deliberate policy design by the erstwhile NPP government. It was a crisis
intervention aimed at foreign exchange generation and not profit. This is why the erstwhile NPP government and the BoG decided by policy design to buy ASM gold under the DGPP at spot prices. Nobody buys gold at spot prices and yet seeks profit. This is why the DGPP never made profit since its inception in
2021. The focus of the then government and the BoG had always been the economic benefit of the Program.
o Therefore, 2025 DGPP losses are not the product of mismanagement, or misappropriations by the current leaders of the BoG. They are the product of policy design and the price of the economic stabilisation we are enjoying today. Although the reported losses have over the years negatively impacted the books of the BoG, the reported losses are largely exchange rate valuation or translational effects and not evidence of criminality or loss of state funds.
o The IMF itself has attributed the reported DGPP losses of USD1.7 billion to the “scaling up” of the DGPP and not mismanagement. It is that scaling up of the Program that largely increased foreign reserves from USD8.9 billion in 2024 to about USD13 billion in 2025. And it is this same scaling up of the DGPP that largely delivered the appreciation of the Ghana Cedis by 41% in 2025, the substantial reduction in inflation from 23.8% to below 5% and the macro-economic stability we are enjoying today.
CONCLUSION
Ladies and gentlemen, I wish to conclude by urging the media and the Ghanaian public to hold Afenyo-Markin and others who make unfounded allegations about “GoldBod losses” to the strictest standard of proof, particularly in the light of the detailed facts I have placed before you today.
o Let me state that the persistent noise from people like him does not arise from any genuine quest for accountability or any sincere desire to interrogate the operations of the GoldBod. Rather, it is part of a calculated smear campaign aimed at undermining the significant contribution that the GoldBod is making to the economic transformation agenda of President Mahama’s administration.
o The likes of Afenyo Markin simply cannot reconcile themselves with the transformational work of the GoldBod because they appreciate the important role it has played in the historic appreciation of the Ghana Cedi and the significant strengthening of Ghana’s international reserves; developments that are contributing to improved economic conditions for the Ghanaian people.
o Afenyo-Markin’s continuing antics must therefore be seen for what they are – a desperate smear campaign by persons who have specialised in sophistry and political blackmail in pursuit of selfish ends. These are
devious extortionists and political mercenaries who will come at you with lies to tarnish your reputation in the hope that you fold and settle for what they call “compulsory arbitration” and through that, oil their palms. Well, this time around, the found the wrong target.
o The Ghanaian people deserve serious public discourse founded on facts, evidence and truth, not an endless recycling of falsehoods in the hope that repetition will lend them credibility and turn fiction into facts.
o The GoldBod is serving this nation dutifully and conscientiously and we have nothing to hide. Let me reiterate my challenge to Afenyo Markin that I am ready any day and time to appear before any committee of Parliament to discuss the operational and financial health of the GoldBod. Let no one seek to obfuscate this important challenge by roping in the Bank of Ghana. Mr. Afenyo Markin, you claim the GoldBod has made losses. You also claim that the GoldBod is responsible for the losses of the Bank of Ghana, we are waiting for your invitation to appear before Parliament for you to substantiate this claims.
o The GoldBod will remain focused on its mandate. We will continue to account transparently for our stewardship. And we will not be distracted from the important work of creating value for the Ghanaian people from the exploitation of the gold resources of our beloved nation.
Thank you.
