GoldBod reforms seek to stop gold trade losses – Sammy Gyamfi

The Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod), Sammy Gyamfi, has said reforms in the small-scale mining sector aim to bring unrecorded gold exports into the official trading system.

Speaking at the second day of the African Minerals Policy Forum, Mining in Motion 2026, he said gaps in Ghana’s gold export records highlighted the need for stronger oversight.

Gyamfi cited a SWISSAID analysis of UN trade data, which found a discrepancy of 229 tonnes between Ghana’s declared gold exports and the imports reported by its trading partners from 2019 to 2023.

The gold was valued at about US$11.4 billion.

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He said the findings suggested that large quantities of gold had left Ghana without being captured in official export records or generating foreign exchange through the formal system.

He also pointed to a sharp decline in recorded small-scale gold exports before the reforms.

Official exports fell from 75.7 tonnes in 2018 to 53.4 tonnes in 2019 and 39.3 tonnes in 2020.

He said the introduction of a 3% withholding tax on unprocessed small-scale gold was followed by a further decline in recorded exports to 3.4 tonnes in 2021, valued at US$185 million.

“The gold beneath our soil had not disappeared, nor had production stopped; the trade had simply moved beyond official view,” he said.

Gyamfi attributed the situation to weak supervision, poorly coordinated trading arrangements and ineffective systems for collecting gold and repatriating export earnings to Ghana.

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He said GoldBod’s reforms were aimed at bringing more gold trading into the formal economy, improving accountability and ensuring Ghanaians derived greater benefits from the country’s natural resources.

DR/MA

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