The Minority Leader in Parliament, Alexander Afenyo-Markin, has maintained that the Minority’s concerns over the reported GH¢22 billion loss linked to the Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod) are not politically motivated.
He said the concerns were being raised because Ghanaians deserved clear information on how public funds were being used in GoldBod’s domestic gold purchasing programme.
Mr Afenyo-Markin made the remarks at a press conference in Parliament yesterday, where he defended the Minority’s position on the financial implications of the programme.
He said the figures cited by the Minority were contained in an International Monetary Fund (IMF) report on Ghana and were therefore not figures manufactured by the opposition.
According to him, the IMF identified losses of about US$1.7 billion, equivalent to approximately GH¢22 billion, from the domestic gold purchasing programme in 2025.
He said the IMF attributed the losses to service and assay fees, discounts on gold sold to off-takers and exchange-rate differences between the rates used to purchase gold and the reference rate used by the Bank of Ghana for accounting purposes.
Mr Afenyo-Markin said the reported losses should be subjected to public scrutiny because GoldBod played a central role in buying, aggregating, assaying and exporting the gold, while the Bank of Ghana provided the financing.
He questioned why GoldBod should receive fees from the transactions while the associated losses were reflected in the Bank of Ghana’s accounts.
The Minority Leader stressed that the fact that a loss appeared in an institution’s accounts did not change its economic impact on the country.
He therefore called for answers on the prices paid for gold, how those prices were determined, the selection of off-takers, discounts applied to gold sales and the fees earned by GoldBod.
Mr Afenyo-Markin also questioned the risk-sharing arrangement between GoldBod and the Bank of Ghana, arguing that an institution undertaking the commercial activity should not benefit from transaction fees while another institution bears most of the financial risk.
He said the Minority was not seeking to trade insults with GoldBod officials but was focused on holding public institutions accountable for the management of public resources.
He urged the government and GoldBod to address the concerns raised by the IMF and provide Ghanaians with clear explanations about the reported losses.
Mr Afenyo-Markin said the Minority would continue to scrutinise the programme because its financial consequences ultimately affected Ghanaian taxpayers.
BY JACOB AGGREY
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