President of IMANI Africa, Mr. Franklin Cudjoe, has welcomed what he describes as clear improvements in the management of Ghana’s gold trading framework, while calling for full transparency and accountability over reported losses linked to the Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod) system.
His comments come amid an ongoing national debate on governance, risk management and accountability in Ghana’s gold trading and reserve-building strategies, particularly following GoldBod’s rejection of claims that it has incurred operational losses.
In a Facebook post assessing both the defunct Gold-for-Oil initiative and the current GoldBod framework, Mr. Cudjoe said the Mahama administration appears to have drawn important lessons from past policy missteps.
He commended GoldBod, the Bank of Ghana (BoG) and the Ministry of Finance for reforms introduced so far.
“Having followed the Gold-for-Oil and GoldBod programmes, it is clear significant lessons have been learned by the current government to avoid repeating past mistakes. GoldBod, the Bank of Ghana and the Finance Ministry deserve commendation,” he wrote.
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Despite acknowledging the structural improvements, Mr. Cudjoe warned that transaction losses are likely under the current GoldBod operating model due to foreign exchange conversion risks involved in buying and selling gold.
He explained that the conversion of dollars to cedis and back in gold transactions creates inherent exposure to exchange rate movements, making some level of loss unavoidable.
Mr. Cudjoe said he understood why GoldBod may be hesitant to recognise such losses on its books, given its role as an intermediary between gold aggregators and the central bank.
“I can understand why GoldBod would not classify the losses on its books, since it sees itself as an intermediary between the Bank of Ghana, which provides the cedis for gold purchases, and the aggregators, with the central bank ultimately receiving the dollar proceeds from gold sales,” he said.
However, he stressed that regardless of how they are labelled transactional or trade-related, such losses remain losses and must be fully explained, particularly given their reported magnitude.
“A reported $214 million loss is significant enough for the public to know how it happened, when it happened, and where it happened, including which buyers were involved and the scale of losses per transaction,” Mr. Cudjoe stated.
He argued that detailed disclosure would help authorities reduce future losses and guard against the risk of insider trading or the misuse of privileged information within the system.
According to him, transparency would not only improve risk management but also help prevent any gaming or manipulation of the gold trading process, regardless of whether spot and forward prices are publicly displayed by GoldBod.
Mr. Cudjoe also called on the Bank of Ghana to provide a public account of the reported losses and outline steps being taken to prevent a recurrence.
“I believe the Bank of Ghana should explain how the $214 million loss occurred and what measures are being put in place to minimise such losses in future transactions,” he said.
He further expressed concern that information about the alleged losses only became public through disclosures associated with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), rather than through proactive communication by Ghanaian institutions.
“My concern is that it took the IMF to publish this information before we began debating it locally. That is not ideal,” he added.
