Deputy Minister for Finance, Thomas Ampem Nyarko has announced that the newly established Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod) purchased a historic total of 135.843 metric tonnes of gold between January 2025 and May 2026.
Speaking before Parliament, the Minister outlined how this strategic aggregation of the nation’s precious metal over the 16-month period served as a foundational pillar for macroeconomic recovery.
The unprecedented volume bought by the state regulatory body represents an aggressive shift toward capturing maximum internal value from the domestic gold trade and halting decades of illicit mineral capital flight.
“From January 2025 to May 2026, the Gold Board purchased a total of 135.843 metric tonnes of gold, of which 135.221 metric tonnes were sourced from the artisanal and small scale mining sector. In 2025 alone, the Gold Board cumulatively purchased, aggregated, and exported 104 metric tonnes of ASM gold, generating more than US$10 billion for the country.”
Deputy Minister for Finance, Thomas Ampem Nyarko
Hon. Nyarko revealed that out of the total volume acquired during this timeframe, an overwhelming majority of 135.221 metric tonnes was actively sourced from the artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) sector.
This formalization drive was made possible through a rigorous administrative framework that successfully licensed 1,184 domestic buyers by May 31, 2026, comprising two primary aggregators, 67 self-financing aggregators, 736 Tier Two buyers, and 379 Tier One buyers.
Under the strict terms of their operational mandates, these intermediaries bought gold exclusively from certified local miners for direct, onward delivery to the national reserve.
Financial records presented by the Ministry show that GoldBod injected approximately US$16.11 billion into the local mining economy for these purchases over the 16 months, with US$9.8 billion disbursed in the 2025 fiscal year alone.
Curbing Illicit Capital Flight and Plugging Revenue Leaks
The rapid deployment of the Ghana Gold Board acts as a direct counter-offensive against systemic cross-border gold smuggling, an economic wound that has severely drained West Africa’s primary energy and mineral corridors for years.
Independent international reports, including exhaustive findings published by Reuters, indicated that Ghana lost an estimated US$11.4 billion to illicit gold smuggling networks between 2019 and 2023.
By establishing an airtight, legally backed state aggregation system, GoldBod is systematically dismantling these “shadow trading channels” that historically left the country’s natural wealth underpriced and untaxed.
The state-driven purchasing architecture replaces fragmented, informal supply chains with transparent, domestic assaying and refining systems.
By providing artisanal and small-scale miners with a reliable, legally protected, and fairly priced market, the government is successfully re-routing billions of dollars in mineral revenue back into the formal state accounting books, effectively converting a massive historical vulnerability into a transparent national asset.
Shoring Up Foreign Reserves and Currency Stabilization
The commercial outcomes achieved by GoldBod have radically transformed Ghana’s macroeconomic indicators, injecting immediate stability into the local monetary ecosystem.
In 2025 alone, the regulatory body successfully aggregated and exported 104 metric tonnes of small-scale gold, which generated a massive influx of over US$10 billion in direct foreign exchange earnings.
This unprecedented liquidity injection was the primary driver behind a dramatic 41 percent appreciation of the Ghana cedi against the United States dollar across the 2025 fiscal year.
Furthermore, these steady export earnings allowed the central bank to aggressively build up its external buffer, causing the nation’s gross foreign exchange reserves to surge from US$8.98 billion in December 2024 to an impressive US$13.8 billion by the end of December 2025.
This massive build-up of hard currency reserves fundamentally changes Ghana’s international credit landscape, providing a robust buffer against global economic shocks, lowering import inflation, and strengthening the state’s sovereign balance sheet.
Formalizing the ASM Sector and Enhancing Environmental Compliance
Beyond pure financial metrics, the structured framework of GoldBod serves as an essential mechanism for long-term environmental protection and regulatory compliance within the mining sector.
By utilizing a multi-tiered hierarchy of more than 1,100 certified buyers, the state is creating an economic incentive system that alienates unauthorized, destructive operations while empowering compliant, regularized miners.
To ensure the long-term sustainability of the sector, the Ghana Gold Board has heavily fortified its institutional collaboration with the National Anti-Illegal Mining Operations Secretariat.
This targeted joint architecture is explicitly designed to dismantle dangerous, unregistered mining sites that degrade critical river bodies and forest reserves.
By tying the legal sale of gold to verifiable, eco-friendly extraction practices, the state is effectively utilizing its market power to clean up the local environment, formalize thousands of rural mining livelihoods, and safeguard the nation’s sovereign resource base for future generations.
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