Gold Board Controversy: The NPP is clinging to a straw

When a party runs out of real arguments, it does what drowning men do: it grabs at anything floating, even if it’s a straw. That is exactly what the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and its Minority Caucus are doing with the Ghana Gold Board issue.

For months now, we have watched obnoxious press conferences, Facebook posts, and parliamentary tantrums about "losses", "secret deals", and "BoG bailouts". The noise is loud, the evidence is thin, the motive is obvious: political opportunism.

The accusation is a supposed $214m "loss". The Minority’s headline claim is that GoldBod lost about $214 million, approximately GHS 2.5 billion in 2025. They also allege that gold is being sold below world market price, and that losses are being dumped on the Bank of Ghana.

On the surface, it sounds scandalous; dig deeper, and the case collapses, because it is frivolous, mischievous, and malicious.

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of GoldBod, Sammy Gyamfi, and GoldBod have put numbers on the table. Audited figures show:

2023: GHS 2.15 billion in losses under G4O + G4R

2024: GHS 4.84 billion in losses

2023-2024 under NPP: about GHS 7 billion gone

Then came 2025: the G4O programme was discontinued, G4R was restructured, and GoldBod posted an operational surplus of GH¢909.7 million and an overall surplus of GH¢5.44 billion, even as global gold prices fell by 23%.

So the "loss" the NPP is screaming about happened under the old system they themselves ran. The new system is making money; these are verifiable facts.

Facts are sacred and immutable, no matter the level of the noise.

That is the paradox Sammy Gyamfi pointed out, and it’s why the call for a probe rings hollow and dead. You don’t call for an investigation into a firefighter because the house next door burned down on your watch.

But what about the cedi and inflation? This is where the straw gets even thinner.

Between 2023 and 2024, when G4O/G4R losses ballooned, the cedi depreciated by 27.8% and 19.2%. Inflation was 22.3% and 23.8%.

In 2025, despite the Minority’s claims, inflation fell for 11 straight months from 23.8% to 6.3%. The cedi appreciated by over 35% against the dollar. That is the strongest performance we have seen in this country since 2007.

Correlation is not causation, but GoldBod’s model of buying ASM gold in cedis, selling in dollars, and mopping up forex is clearly doing something the old system couldn’t.

Small-scale miners agree. The Ghana National Association of Small-Scale Miners (GNASSM) has publicly supported GoldBod for excluding foreigners from direct purchases, paying better prices, and putting real-time data in the hands of miners. They’ve asked Parliament to stop politicizing a policy that is finally working for the people who dig the gold.

The real grievance is not what it looks like on the surface; let’s be honest, the NPP isn’t angry that GoldBod is failing; they are angry that it is succeeding without them.

When Kojo Oppong Nkrumah says a future NPP government will "reform" GoldBod if the current amendment "falls short", what he’s really saying is: we didn’t write this bill, so we don’t like it.

But governance isn’t about ownership; it’s about results, and the results are: more forex, lower inflation, a stronger cedi, and miners getting paid on time.

The claims about selling at $3,919 when the world price was $4,054, or about "premiums" and "discounts", deserve answers. GoldBod has said it will provide a comprehensive response. Good, transparency matters.

But to call for the dissolution of the Board, and the removal of the BoG Governor and CEO, over unaudited, disputed figures while ignoring GHS 7 billion in losses under your own tenure, is not oversight; it’s desperation.

The NPP is clinging to a straw; even though a straw doesn’t hold weight, it bends; it breaks.

The NPP’s GoldBod attack is a straw because:

1. The losses they cite belong to their own programmes.

2. The new numbers show surplus, not collapse.

3. The macro indicators- cedi and inflation are moving in the right direction.

4. The people on the ground, the miners, say it’s working.

You can’t campaign on "fixing the economy" and then attack the one institution that is demonstrably helping to stabilize it.

Parliament should do its job, probe if you must. But do it in good faith, with facts, not press releases designed for the evening news.

Ghanaians are tired of political theatre; we want affordable food, stable prices, and jobs. GoldBod, for all its teething problems, is delivering on at least two of those.

The NPP should let go of the straw and start building an alternative that can actually float.