A leading Ghanaian policy analyst has renewed criticism of the Bank of Ghana’s (BoG) decision to sell a significant portion of its gold reserves, arguing that the proceeds were deployed to reduce the central bank’s reported losses rather than strengthen the country’s foreign exchange buffers as officially stated.
Kofi Bentil, Senior Vice President of the policy think tank IMANI Africa, made the assertion in a social media post reacting to the BoG’s 2025 audited financial statements, released on May 1, 2026.
Bentil said his earlier scepticism about the rationale for the gold sale had been confirmed by the numbers in the audited accounts. “When I questioned the gold sale, the response was that Ghana had too much gold in our reserve portfolio and so it was sold for dollars to balance the portfolio. I never believed it. Now we can see clearly that the revenue from that gold sale was simply used to reduce the losses of the BoG. It was not put into reserve,” he wrote.
He argued that the proceeds from an asset sale should not be treated as ordinary revenue. “That revenue is what accountants call ‘other income.’ It is not regular income from operations and so must not simply be dumped into normal revenue and spent to reduce losses. It’s like saying you don’t have money so you sell your house to buy food,” he said, calling on the BoG to explain whether such an approach is sustainable.
The BoG’s 2025 accounts show the bank recorded GH₵22.23 billion in operating income, of which GH₵9.57 billion came from gains on refined gold sales, a one-off item that significantly cushioned the headline loss figure.
BoG Governor Johnson Asiama confirmed at the March 2026 Monetary Policy Committee press briefing that the sale of over 19 tonnes of gold generated a profit of more than $1.3 billion, with the transaction reflecting the difference between the price at which gold had been accumulated and the significantly higher prices at which it was sold as global gold prices surged through 2025. The governor maintained that the primary reason for selling approximately half of Ghana’s gold holdings was to rebalance the reserve portfolio, which had grown heavily concentrated in gold.
Bentil had earlier stated on Newsfile that the BoG is neither a profit-making nor a loss-making institution but one mandated to stabilise the economy, and that with sound policy and competent management, it should be able to fulfil that mandate without incurring significant financial losses.
The BoG posted a net loss of GH₵15.63 billion for the year ended December 31, 2025, a 65 percent increase from the GH₵9.49 billion loss recorded in 2024. The central bank’s negative equity has widened to GH₵93.82 billion.
The BoG has projected a return to profitability between 2026 and 2030 as interest rates decline and the cost of open market operations eases. The debate over the gold sale and the 2025 losses continues to attract scrutiny from civil society, the Minority in Parliament, and financial analysts.
