Ghana's Gold-Buying Program Costs Central Bank $1.9 Billion

Ghana's central bank incurred a significant loss of $1.9 billion in 2025, linked to a special domestic program designed to buy gold from local miners and strengthen the country's financial safety net.

The Bank of Ghana launched this program to increase its foreign-exchange reserves by providing money for GoldBod, a government organization. However, high service fees, costs for testing the gold (assay charges), and trading margins caused heavy losses, according to an IMF report.

Despite the financial loss, the program successfully raised Ghana's international reserves by $3.9 billion, bringing the total to $11.9 billion by the end of 2025.

The high cost of these trades hurt the central bank's overall financial health, pushing its negative equity to 6.7% of the nation's gross domestic product, as revealed by Bloomberg.