Dr. Gideon Boako
Member of Parliament (MP) for Tano South and Deputy Ranking Member on the Finance Committee of Parliament, Dr. Gideon Boako, has observed that government is artificially pushing the strength of the Cedi through the gold purchase programme.
In a reaction on the subject, he noted that “when Dr. Bawumia and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) Government introduced this policy, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) went to the market insulting him with unprintable names. Today, without shame they are celebrating the gold purchase programme, which is the main reason for the strong performance of the Cedi; and the Bank of Ghana (BoG) unfortunately is doing this without regards to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme.”
This is also being done with unprecedented opacity in the operations of the BoG, he said.
According to the BoG published records, he said, “its gold reserves as at 30th April, 2025 stood at 31.37 tonnes. This is up from 30.53 tonnes as at 31st December, 2024. This means that the NDC government added less than a ton (0.8 tons) in four months (January – April). This is a slow buildup of the gold reserves compared with what the NPP did.”
“Meanwhile, a publication by Hon. Sammy Gyamfi I sighted on the X page of Hon. Rockson-Nelson Dafeamekpor, Esq., MP, showed that a total of 20.53 tonnes of gold were purchased and exported by Precious Minerals Marketing Company (PMMC) on behalf of BoG from January to March 2025 valued at $1.08 billion,” he added.
This compared with the less than 1 tonne of gold added to the gold reserves over the same period, he said.
He posed the following questions:
“Where is the gold purchased in 2025 by PMMC on your behalf?
“Where are the proceeds from the export of this gold?
“What happened to the proceeds from the export of this gold?”
The BoG, he noted, has put close to a $1 billion in market intervention to shore up the Cedi as opposed to the IMF programme target of not more than $60 million of market intervention per month or a cumulative $240 million for the past four months.
The BoG, he said, has denied selling reserves to strengthen the Cedi, and that it is engaged in foreign exchange market reforms. “This is far from the truth as it has not provided the kind of reforms being implemented to achieve these results.
“Whilst a strong currency is desirable and must be applauded, achieving this through artificial measures, without regards to transparency and defying the IMF programme can be harmful to the economy as these cannot be sustainable,” he said.