Ghana Gold Board Chief Executive Sammy Gyamfi has led board chairpersons and chief executives of the country’s specified state entities in adopting a set of governance and financing commitments, pledging to reduce their institutions’ dependence on subventions, sovereign-backed borrowing and incidental foreign exchange gains.
He read the commitments at the 2026 Governing Boards and CEOs’ Conference organised by the State Interests and Governance Authority in Accra, held under the theme Creating Public Value Through Leadership, Corporate Governance and Performance Excellence.
The declaration arrived hours after President John Dramani Mahama and SIGA Director-General Professor Michael Kpessa-Whyte had used the same platform to catalogue the sector’s weaknesses.
What the room produced in response reads as a point-by-point answer to those criticisms, made voluntarily and destined for signature by every chairperson and chief executive present.
The legal scaffolding
Mr Gyamfi framed the commitments as flowing from the day’s panel discussions and from SIGA’s statutory oversight under the SIGA Act, the Public Financial Management Act and their attendant regulations.
He anchored the substance in the Code of Corporate Governance for Specified Entities and Public Service Organisations, together with international best practice, positioning the exercise as an articulation of existing obligations rather than the invention of new ones.
The first block of commitments addresses how state entities fund themselves. Leaders undertook to move their institutions progressively away from subventions, sovereign-backed borrowing and incidental foreign exchange gains, toward sustainable market-based and internally generated financing strategies, with boards reviewing progress at least annually.
That pledge speaks directly to the President’s earlier warning that the sector’s GH¢19.8 billion profit rested substantially on GH¢11.72 billion in net foreign exchange earnings and a sharp fall in finance costs, rather than on operational strength.
Entities also committed to exploring alternative financing instruments where viable, naming public-private partnerships, blended finance, infrastructure bonds and other capital market instruments, and to working with SIGA and relevant regulators to identify and dismantle the institutional and regulatory barriers that currently block their use.
Alongside that, leaders undertook to pursue strategic asset management, including responsible leveraging of land, infrastructure and other holdings to make their entities investment-ready, while ensuring that any capital secured converts into measurable public value.
Discipline before capital
The commitments attach conditions to the pursuit of new money. Leaders pledged to institutionalise robust financial planning, budgeting and cash flow management, anchored in realistic revenue projections and disciplined cost control, with the stated aim of strengthening financial resilience, solvency and creditworthiness.
They further undertook to subject every major financing or investment decision to rigorous feasibility analysis, independent due diligence and risk assessment, and to report transparently to SIGA and other stakeholders on the performance and returns of the capital deployed.
The sequencing matters. An entity that borrows on capital markets without credible projections or independent scrutiny simply relocates its fiscal risk rather than reducing it, which is the pattern the President described when he warned that every cedi written off on behalf of a poorly managed enterprise reduces what government can spend on classrooms and clinics.
Drawing the line between board and management
The second block turns to the relationship President Mahama had addressed in his own remarks. Chairpersons and chief executives committed to maintaining a clear and mutually respected boundary between board strategic oversight and executive authority, and to operating as accountability partners in the interest of their entities and the state.
On compliance, they undertook to treat SIGA’s statutory requirements, including the timely negotiation, signing and implementation of performance contracts and the submission of required information, as a core governance obligation and a genuine accountability tool rather than an administrative exercise.
That commitment carries particular weight given the figures Professor Kpessa-Whyte presented, showing 72 of 148 targeted entities signing performance contracts in 2025 and just 37 of 177 holding annual general or stakeholder meetings.
Leaders also accepted individual and collective accountability for entity performance, agreeing that persistent non-compliance and underperformance must be addressed promptly, transparently and with appropriate consequences under the SIGA Act.
Integrity and institutional durability
The final undertakings cover conduct and continuity. Participants committed to ethical leadership, proactive identification and management of conflicts of interest, resistance to undue interference in operational decision-making, and a zero-tolerance culture for corruption.
They pledged to invest in institutional capacity through board and management competence, succession planning and robust risk management and internal control systems, so that continuity and performance survive the departure of any individual leader.
Mr Gyamfi closed by putting the commitments to the room for voice assent, which the delegates gave, before instructing chairpersons and chief executives to append their signatures to copies already circulating.
Whether those signatures translate into filings, contracts and consequences is a question the 2026 State Ownership Report will answer more honestly than any conference hall could.
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