Former Finance Minister and Karaga MP, Dr Mohammed Amin Adam, has questioned the manner in which the Bank of Ghana accounted for losses associated with Ghana’s gold purchase programme in 2025.
The Bank of Ghana reported a net loss of GH¢9.05 billion, while the IMF estimated the full economic cost of the gold programme at approximately GH¢22 billion.
Dr Amin Adam said two items largely explain the gap between the figures: a GH¢5 billion recapitalisation bond and GH¢7.99 billion in paper gains recorded as income.
According to him, the GH¢7.99 billion represented unrealised gains accumulated on gold purchased in 2023 and 2024 under the previous government.
He said the gains were released and recognised as income when the Bank sold 22.24 tonnes of reserve gold in October 2025 for US$3.02 billion.
“The Bank’s gold related losses would have been far larger but for a gain on gold sales of GH¢9.57 billion, its single largest source of income that year,” Dr Amin Adam said.
He said GH¢7.99 billion of that amount was an accounting reclassification in which unrealised paper gains were moved into the profit column.
“Remove that single entry and the Bank’s own preferred measure of financial strength, its solvency, flips from a positive GH¢5.50 billion to a negative GH¢2.49 billion,” he said.
Dr Amin Adam further said total equity would worsen from negative GH¢61.32 billion to negative GH¢96.28 billion if the accounting entry was removed.
He rejected attempts to dismiss the issue simply as a matter of valuation effects.
“If a valuation gain is real enough to shrink a loss, a valuation loss cannot be waved away as unreal,” he said.
