The Finance and Economy policy Committee of the New Patriotic Party [NPP] has reviewed official documents on Ghana’s gold trading programme and insists that the GH¢22 billion loss figure cited in the International Monetary Fund [IMF] Country Report is accurate and originates from the Government of Ghana itself.

Speaking at a press briefing, Dr. Mohammed Amin Adam Karaga Constituency and former minister of finance said the NPP’s analysis was based on the IMF Country Report, the audited 2025 accounts of the Bank of Ghana and the Gold Board, the Bank’s own published data, and the Ghana GoldBod Act.[GoldBod]

Dr. Amin Adam stressed that IMF reports are not based on data manufactured by the Fund, but on data supplied by the Bank of Ghana, the Ministry of Finance and other relevant state agencies.

“For those familiar with IMF reports, and I worked with the IMF when I was Finance Minister, those reports are first drafted and submitted to the authorities to confirm every line and every number before it is completed and published. That is the practice by the IMF. So if you read any data from an IMF report on Ghana, especially at this time when Ghana is under the IMF’s Policy Coordination Instrument, then you should know that this is data coming from our government authorities,” he said.

He explained that under the Policy Coordination Instrument [PCI] adopted by the current government, government is bound to provide economic and financial data to the IMF. Therefore, those seeking to distance government from the IMF report do not understand the mechanics of the Fund’s relationship with government and risk undermining the credibility of Ghana’s dealings with the IMF.

According to the NPP, the major concern is that the second largest item in Ghana’s 2025 public finances cannot be properly explained by the institutions that produced it, as three official sources are reporting three very different figures for the same gold programme.

He outlined the discrepancies:

GoldBod reported a GH¢5.45 billion surplus from its trading operations.
The Bank of Ghana in its audited accounts reported a GH¢9.05 billion net loss, described as net loss on gold deals.
The IMF Country Report reports a GH¢22 billion programme loss, described as the full economic loss of the programme.

Dr. Amin Adam noted that each figure measures a different point on the same chain of transactions, but until now, no one had published the arithmetic connecting the figures.

He said two items explain almost all of the roughly GH¢13 billion gap between the IMF’s GH¢22 billion figure and the Bank of Ghana’s GH¢9.05 billion figure:

1. A GH¢5 billion transfer from government’s main treasury account, the Consolidated Fund, described by the Finance Minister as a recapitalisation bond. This, he said, is effectively a loan that will be repaid later by Ghanaian taxpayers through future budgets.

2. GH¢1.99 billion in paper gains on gold that were booked as income when the Bank of Ghana sold 22.24 tons of Ghana’s reserve gold in October 2025 for US$3.0 billion. The unrealized gain built up on gold reserves purchased in 2023 and 2024 under the Akufo-Addo government was released and counted as 2025 relief.

“Subtracting these two items from the IMF’s GH¢22 billion figure leaves about GH¢9.01 billion, almost exactly matching the Bank of Ghana’s reported GH¢9.05 billion loss. The remaining GH¢40 million is a currency conversion difference. Therefore, the IMF was not wrong, as NDC propagandists and some analysts have sought to imply,” Dr. Amin Adam stated.

He accused the Bank of Ghana of failing to explain to Ghanaians how it arrived at a loss of GH¢9.05 billion in its audited report, instead of announcing the IMF’s GH¢22 billion figure, describing it as an “intelligent scheme to conceal the real story behind the gold purchase programme.”

On the GoldBod surplus, he said of the reported GH¢5.45 billion surplus, GH¢4.54 billion, representing 81.7%, was simply a capital injection from government credited to GoldBod’s books around 30th December 2025, one day before the financial year closed.

“Standard public sector and international accounting rules treat money put in by an owner as capital, not revenue. And Gold Board’s own financial statements describe this fund as revolving trade capital,” he added.

Report by Bernard K Dadzie Greater Accra Region