A new independent technical report by three senior academics from the University of Ghana has found that the Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod) has delivered substantial macroeconomic benefits to the country, with gains from reduced gold smuggling and non-debt foreign exchange inflows far outweighing the Bank of Ghana’s reported trading losses.
The report, titled “Evaluating the Macroeconomic Effects of the Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod)” and dated January 4, 2026, was authored by Professor Festus Ebo Turkson of the Department of Economics, Professor Agyapomaa Gyeke-Dako of the University of Ghana Business School, and economist Peter Junior Dotse.
Using conservative assumptions and verifiable data, the researchers assessed GoldBod’s impact on Ghana’s external sector, fiscal stability and overall macroeconomic performance.
According to the findings, recorded artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) gold exports rose sharply from 63.6 metric tonnes in 2024 to 103.0 metric tonnes in 2025, representing an incremental increase of 39.4 tonnes. The report indicates that this additional volume plausibly reflects gold that had previously been smuggled out of the country but has now been formalised through GoldBod’s pricing and purchasing framework.
Valued conservatively at US$96.5 million per tonne, the formalised gold generated an estimated US$3.8 billion in additional foreign exchange inflows into the formal economy in 2025 alone.
The researchers directly compared these gains with the International Monetary Fund-reported Bank of Ghana trading loss of US$214 million and concluded that GoldBod’s macroeconomic benefits exceed the reported cost by a wide margin.
On the authors’ estimates, the benefit-to-cost ratio is approximately 18 to 1, with formalisation of just 2.2 tonnes of gold sufficient to offset the reported loss, compared with the much larger volumes actually captured during the year.
Beyond smuggling reduction, the report highlights the strategic importance of GoldBod-enabled gold exports as a source of non-debt foreign exchange. ASM exports facilitated through GoldBod amounted to an estimated US$10.8 billion in 2025.
The report notes that mobilising an equivalent volume of foreign exchange through external borrowing would have exposed the country to annual interest costs of between US$756 million and US$1.08 billion, based on borrowing rates of 7 to 10 percent.
Even when focusing only on the plausible reduction in smuggling, the avoided annual interest cost is estimated at between US$266 million and US$380 million, representing recurring savings to the economy.
The report further attributes a range of broader macroeconomic gains to GoldBod-supported foreign exchange inflows, including higher international reserves estimated at between US$11 billion and US$12 billion, exchange-rate stabilisation and appreciation beyond IMF programme assumptions, and a reduction in the domestic cost of servicing external debt estimated at about GHS 6.2 billion.
It also cites a lower valuation of the import bill between January and October 2025, estimated at GHS 50.6 billion, alongside disinflationary effects resulting from reduced exchange-rate pass-through.
Addressing public concerns over the Bank of Ghana’s reported trading loss, the authors argue that the figure has been widely misunderstood.
They explain that much of the loss reflects accounting translation effects rather than actual cash losses, arising from the practice of purchasing gold at near-retail exchange rates to deter smuggling while booking foreign exchange inflows at the lower interbank rate.
The report estimates the true economic cost of the programme, including fees, purity losses and offtake discounts, at approximately 2.5 percent of the value of gold traded, significantly lower than headline figures.
The authors conclude that GoldBod should be assessed not as a profit-driven trading entity but as a policy instrument for macroeconomic stabilisation and formalisation.
They recommend sustaining price competitiveness to prevent a return of smuggling, improving transparency in official reporting, strengthening governance and oversight, and treating the programme’s policy costs as a quasi-fiscal expense funded through the national budget.
Based on the available evidence, the report describes GoldBod as a high-return policy intervention that has strengthened Ghana’s external position, reduced reliance on costly borrowing and supported macroeconomic stability.
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