While the global gold rush of 2025 sent prices to historic highs and filled Ghana’s national coffers with record export earnings, the Bank of Ghana is paying a dear price for this business.
A new report from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reveals that despite the huge financial reward for the state, the Bank of Ghana (BoG) was quietly hemorrhaging cash to keep the business moving.
The IMF’s 2026 Country Report details how the BoG’s Domestic Gold Purchase Programme (DGPP), the very engine used to rebuild Ghana’s international reserves, suffered massive operational losses totaling GHS 22 billion in 2025 alone.
This figure, equivalent to 1.5 percent of Ghana’s entire GDP (approximately US$1.72 billion), has left a massive dent in the central bank’s balance sheet and forced a radical overhaul of how the country buys its gold.
Buying High, Selling at a Loss
For many, the critical question is “How does a central bank lose nearly $2 billion buying one of the world’s most stable assets during a price boom?”
According to the IMF, the losses were baked into the way the program was run. The BoG essentially acted as what the IMF describes as a “quasi-fiscal” agent, taking on costs that were more like government spending than banking.
The report reveals that for every ounce of gold the bank bought, it incurred staggering operational losses of 15.3 percent. These losses weren’t caused by market fluctuations, but by administrative choices.
The BoG was hit by high service fees, assay charges, trading margins, and off-taking costs. Most critically, the IMF notes that about half of these losses stemmed from the bank’s decision to purchase gold at forex bureau exchange rates, which are typically much higher than official rates, rather than the reference mid-cedi rates.
In practical terms, the bank was overpaying for gold in local currency while its assets were being valued at official rates, leading to what the IMF calls a “severe deterioration” of the bank’s equity.
The Negative Equity Crisis
The IMF indicates that the fallout from these gold-related losses has been profound. By the end of 2025, the Bank of Ghana’s negative equity position worsened to 6.7 percent of GDP.
The IMF warns that this weakened balance sheet could “compromise its ability to conduct monetary policy” effectively. The situation became so acute that the central bank was forced into a cost-sharing agreement with the government to cover the losses.
This arrangement led the BoG to breach an IMF performance criterion at the end of 2025 regarding the ceiling on credit extended to the government. Essentially, the gold program’s losses were so large they threatened the stability of the entire IMF-supported economic recovery program.
Enter GoldBod: Stopping the Bleeding
To stop the quasi-fiscal bleeding, the IMF mandated a total transfer of gold-purchasing activities away from the central bank. Under the new framework, the Bank of Ghana will no longer be “exposed to incremental doré gold-related quasi-fiscal risks.”
Instead, GoldBod and the government will now absorb all operational costs, which will be transparently included in the budget.
The IMF is demanding strict efficiency. This means that while the BoG lost 15.3% on gold purchases, GoldBod is being mandated to reduce those costs to just 5 percent.
The Bottomline
The IMF reports that an external auditing firm is conducting a special audit of the DGPP from its inception, with results expected by the end of the third quarter of 2026.
For now, the Ghanaian government has committed to a recapitalization plan to fill the hole in the central bank’s books by 2032, a process that the IMF warns will require a sustained fiscal effort from the Ghanaian people to repair the damage done during the gold program’s most expensive years.
