In a fresh concern, Ghana’s strategy of using domestically purchased gold to build foreign exchange reserves is facing a fresh cost question following the revelation by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that the country recorded $1.7 billion in losses from the Domestic Gold Purchase Programme (DGPP) in 2025.
The associated cost of $1.7 billion is raising an important question: Could Ghana have accumulated the same $10.8 billion in foreign exchange reserves at a lower cost by borrowing the funds on the commercial or international market instead?
Data and policy analyst Alfred Appiah believes that the latest disclosure changes the basis for assessing the cost of the programme.
According to GoldBod’s own earlier explanation, it suggested that raising about $10.8 billion through borrowing to meet Ghana’s external obligations and foreign exchange needs could have cost the country approximately $1 billion in interest and transaction fees.
This comparison, Goldbod used to support the argument that accumulating the reserves through the domestic gold purchasing programme was a more cost-effective option.
However, in a twist of events, the latest figures put that claim under renewed scrutiny. According to Appiah, the DGPP recorded losses of about $1.7 billion in 2025. If Ghana effectively spent $1.7 billion to generate about $10.8 billion in reserves. This indicates that the programme’s reported cost is substantially higher than the roughly $1 billion borrowing cost previously cited by GoldBod.
To put it simply, the question is whether Ghana paid more to obtain the dollars through gold than it would have paid to borrow them.
That does not necessarily mean borrowing would have been the better option. Borrowing $10.8 billion would have exposed Ghana to interest payments, transaction fees, refinancing risks and potentially other costs associated with accessing international capital markets.
It could also have increased the country’s debt burden at a time when public debt sustainability remains a major policy concern.
The gold-based approach, on the other hand, was designed to generate foreign exchange while purchasing Ghanaian gold, supporting local gold producers and reducing dependence on external borrowing.
The issue, therefore, is not simply whether the DGPP made losses, but whether those losses represented a cheaper way of securing the foreign exchange Ghana needed.
And this is where the latest disclosure becomes significant. Alfred Appiah notes that the previously cited $214 million cost had created the impression that the programme’s cost was falling despite a sharp increase in the volume of gold purchased.
The latest disclosure of about $1.7 billion in losses, however, presents a very different picture. It suggests that the programme’s 2025 cost was substantially higher than the earlier figure indicated.
The pressing question is “If Ghana needed $10.8 billion in reserves in 2025, would it have cost less to raise that money through borrowing than to generate it through the DGPP?
The answer cannot be determined simply by comparing $1.7 billion with $1 billion. Experts believe that the two approaches carry different financial, economic and strategic risks.
What is now needed is a full cost-benefit comparison showing exactly how much Ghana spent through the DGPP to generate each dollar of reserves, alongside the interest, fees, exchange-rate risks and other costs that borrowing $10.8 billion would have imposed.
For now, one thing which is obvious is that the $1.7 billion loss figure makes the cost question far more difficult to dismiss.
