Bright Simons, vice president of policy think tank IMANI Africa, has renewed calls for greater transparency in Ghana’s gold purchasing programme after the IMF’s (International Monetary Fund) report pointed to losses linked to transactions with small-scale and artisanal miners.
In a message on X addressed to Sammy Gyamfi, chief executive of Goldbod, Simons said the IMF was clear that losses had occurred and had identified the specific programmes responsible. He noted that the report traced the losses to transactions involving dore gold purchased from small and artisanal miners.
Simons argued that responsibility for the losses rests with the buying and selling process, given that Goldbod, by law, is the sole entity authorised to purchase dore gold from small-scale miners. He said Goldbod currently carries out these purchases on behalf of the Bank of Ghana, which provides the funding.
According to Simons, repeated requests for transaction-level information have gone unanswered, despite months of public exchanges. He said the IMF’s findings support concerns IMANI has consistently raised about the programme’s financial performance.
He questioned efforts to dismiss the IMF’s conclusions, warning that doing so would undermine confidence in the Fund’s broader assessment of Ghana’s economy.
“If we shouldn’t trust the IMF on these losses, when they have an agreement with government to collect information directly from the government, then why should we trust ANYTHING ELSE they say about the economy, including the good stuff?” Simons said.
Simons also rejected claims that financial losses cannot be discussed until audited accounts are published. He said management accounts, prepared by management rather than auditors, form the basis of internal planning and decision-making.
“The simple question is, what does Bank of Ghana’s own management accounts say?” he asked, adding that any data reviewed by the IMF would have come from those internal records and could not be considered speculative.
According to him, IMANI’s position is not to undermine Goldbod’s work, but to ensure it succeeds through open and detailed scrutiny. Simons criticised what he described as a long-standing culture of opacity in public institutions, where officials deny information that later proves accurate, weakening public confidence in them.
“This information that was given to the IMF that led them to the conclusion they have come to should have been shared with us… long ago,” he said, expressing hope that transparency would improve.
The exchange stems from growing domestic scrutiny of Ghana’s gold trade arrangements, at a time when the programme plays a central role in foreign exchange management and broader economic stabilisation efforts.
