In a Christmas-season address, the Minority Caucus in Parliament has leveled allegations of economic sabotage and “institutional capture” against the government, citing financial losses and a lack of transparency in the nation’s gold-buying sector.
Addressing the media in what was described as an urgent national call to action, the Minority’s Ranking Member on the Economy and Development, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, accused the administration of turning a once-sovereign reserve-building policy into a “pipeline for draining national wealth.”
Central to the Minority’s grievance is the emergence of Bawa-Rock Limited, a private entity the Caucus claims has been granted a de-facto monopoly. Oppong Nkrumah questioned the selection criteria for the company and its owner, Alhaji Bawa, asking why all artisanal gold must pass through this single private intermediary before reaching the state.
The Caucus pointed to a staggering $214 million loss recorded in the first nine months of 2025, a figure reportedly contained in data submitted by the government to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Projections suggest these losses could soar to $300 million by the end of the year.
”This is not a market fluctuation problem,” Oppong Nkrumah stated. “It is a system design that forces the state to bleed so intermediaries remain secure.”
According to the Minority, GoldBod reportedly purchases gold from miners at high parallel-market exchange rates but sells the resulting foreign exchange to the Bank of Ghana at lower official interbank rates, passing the deficit directly to the central bank’s balance sheet.
The address drew a sharp contrast between the current “GoldBod” framework and the previous “Gold-for-Reserves” program. According to the Minority, the previous administration grew gold reserves by 256% (from 8.7 to 31 tonnes) without incurring such losses. Under the current “rebranded” scheme, they claim reserves have only increased by a marginal 7 tonnes despite massive trading volumes.
Beyond the fiscal impact, the Minority linked the current gold-buying policy to the surge in illegal mining. They argued that the lack of mine-level traceability allows the state to inadvertently “launder” gold from destroyed forest reserves and poisoned rivers, financing ecological destruction with state policy.
Describing the $214 million loss as the equivalent of 12 fully-equipped “Agenda 111” district hospitals or 60,000 boreholes, the Caucus issued four immediate demands:
A Parliamentary Ad-hoc Investigative Committee to be granted subpoena powers to review all contracts, licenses, and the Bawa-Rock arrangement.
They also called for the immediate publication of fee structures, pricing formulas, and selection criteria for aggregators while stressing on suspension of mining permits in forest reserves and the implementation of blockchain-based traceability.
“The business of gold trading is not for spin doctors; it is not about lies and propaganda,” Oppong Nkrumah remarked, dismissing the government’s “reset” agenda as mere “packaging masquerading as vision.”
The Minority concluded by calling on civil society, traditional leaders, and the Ghanaian public to move from being “spectators to citizens” and demand a full accounting of the nation’s gold patrimony.
Eugenia Ewoenam Osei
