Policy think tank, IMANI Africa has cautioned that ongoing structural reforms within Ghana’s extractive sector notably ambitious initiatives like the establishment of GoldBod will ultimately yield limited results unless paired with stringent institutional governance and regulatory accountability across key state organizations.
While expanding on this imperative, the policy research organization emphasizes that systemic interventions designed to maximize national returns from resource exploitation cannot succeed in an environment where primary regulatory bodies operate outside statutory oversight mechanisms.
Without transparent institutional baselines, verifiable operational metrics, and comprehensive disclosures, legislative re-engineering and newly created statutory bodies risk reproducing the very governance vulnerabilities they were instituted to eradicate.
“IMANI’s analysis argues that Ghana’s extractive-sector reforms, including the establishment of GoldBod, must be accompanied by stronger institutional accountability. The Public Financial Management Act and SIGA Act provide frameworks for enforcing compliance, while the performance of governing boards must also come under scrutiny.”
IMANI Africa
The FY2025 Reporting Deficit
This urgent advocacy stems from alarming disclosures in the 2025 State Ownership Report released by the State Interests and Governance Authority (SIGA), which revealed severe reporting non-compliance by two paramount natural resource custodians.
According to SIGA’s findings, neither the Minerals Commission nor the Lands Commission submitted audited financial statements, draft accounts, quarterly operational reports, employment metrics, or their mandatory Annual Performance Contracts for FY2025.
This deliberate non-disclosure obscures the financial standing of agencies responsible for managing vast public lands, mineral leases, and revenue streams, severely crippling public scrutiny and statutory evaluation frameworks.
The magnitude of this administrative omission becomes stark when examined against national economic data. In FY2025 alone, gold exports generated an unprecedented USD 20.98 billion in foreign exchange earnings, constituting an overwhelming 67.43% of Ghana’s total export proceeds.
Despite gold serving as the country’s main macroeconomic anchor, the public remains entirely in the dark regarding the administrative expenditures, royalty collection efficiency, and internal financial health of the Minerals Commission—the primary institution charged with regulating concessions and lease agreements.
Institutional Governance Risks
Evaluating this transparency shortfall, IMANI Associate and Technology Policy Expert Sitsofe Mensah noted that regulatory reforms cannot be properly evaluated without credible financial and institutional baselines.
Mr. Mensah underscored that governing boards bear a direct fiduciary responsibility to ensure strict statutory compliance, emphasizing that failure to meet basic reporting mandates weakens state authority and institutional credibility.
Highlighting the broader ramifications of institutional secrecy on national governance, Mensah poignantly questioned: “When the custodians of the earth refuse to open their ledger, the state must ask whether it is time to change the custodians.”
The failure of these commissions to present basic disclosures directly undermines both the Public Financial Management Act and the SIGA Act, which were enacted specifically to enforce fiscal discipline and public accountability across state-owned enterprises and regulators.
When statutory custodians conceal operational and financial data, state agencies cannot track performance benchmarks or ensure that public mineral and land assets are managed in the best interest of citizens.
Enforcing Statutory Compliance
To prevent further institutional decay, IMANI’s analysis asserts that the executive and legislature must actively enforce statutory compliance by holding governing boards accountable for their deliberate administrative lapses.
Fiduciary duties under public finance laws require governing boards to guarantee transparency; thus, continued non-compliance should warrant immediate board restructuring and executive sanctions.
If Ghana intends to fully realize the benefits of its mineral wealth and land capital, statutory mandates can no longer be treated as optional guidelines by regulatory bodies.
Ultimately, modernizing Ghana’s extractive sector requires more than setting up new entities like GoldBod or drafting prospective policy frameworks.
True structural transformation depends on enforcing rigorous, non-negotiable standards of public accountability across all existing regulatory entities.
Until state custodians consistently open their financial ledgers to public scrutiny, resource governance reforms will remain fundamentally compromised
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