Minority Leader Alexander Afenyo-Markin met New Patriotic Party flagbearer Dr Mahamudu Bawumia at the flagbearer’s private residence in Accra on Monday morning, hours before Parliament reconvened for an emergency sitting.
Dr Bawumia used the meeting to press the Minority to keep the reported loss of more than $1.7 billion under the Domestic Gold Purchase Programme at the top of its parliamentary agenda.
The encounter closes a week of bruising public exchanges between the Minority Caucus and Ghana Gold Board Chief Executive Sammy Gyamfi over who carries responsibility for the loss. Both camps now want the argument settled on the floor of the House rather than through duelling press statements.
Honourable Afenyo-Markin, who is also Member of Parliament for Effutu, said the two men discussed party matters and the agenda facing the caucus as the House returned from recess. He said Bawumia expressed full confidence in his leadership and urged him to stay fixed on the loss of over $1.7 billion, equivalent to 1.5 percent of Gross Domestic Product, arising from the operations of GoldBod and the Bank of Ghana under the programme.
The flagbearer cautioned him against being pulled away by what he described as attempts to divert public attention from the figure.
Dr Bawumia asked the Minority to use every avenue available within the rules of the House to hold the Mahama government fully accountable to Ghanaians for the loss, and commended the caucus for its work so far.
Hon. Afenyo-Markin replied that the caucus intends to prosecute the matter to the fullest extent of its ability, with the interests of the Ghanaian people in mind throughout, and confirmed that the loss sits firmly on the Minority’s agenda for the sitting.
“We remain resolute in this commitment, and we will not relent until the Ghanaian people receive the answers they deserve,” he said.
Inside The IMF Report On The Domestic Gold Purchase Programme
The figure at the centre of the dispute comes from IMF Country Report No. 26/213, prepared as background documentation for Ghana’s 2026 Article IV Consultation and published on 4 August.
The Fund found that the scaling up of programme operations in 2025 produced losses exceeding $1.7 billion, “almost entirely related to G4R doré purchases,” amounting to 17 percent of the value of the doré gold the central bank sold.
Losses under the same programme in 2024 came to close to $400 million. The Fund traced the shortfall to service and assay fees paid to GoldBod, discounts extended to off-takers, and the gap between the forex bureau rate used to buy gold and the Bank of Ghana’s reference rate for accounting purposes.
It noted that part of the loss reflected valuation effects rather than direct cash costs, though the central bank’s balance sheet weakened either way.
The same report credited the programme with rebuilding reserves, recording gold-related inflows that climbed from $1.7 billion in 2023 to $12.7 billion in 2025, and gross international reserves that reached $11.9 billion by year end.
GoldBod Rejects The Loss Attribution
However, Sammy Gyamfi, the Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Gold Board (Goldbod) has pushed back hard on the Minority’s framing.
He has challenged Afenyo-Markin to identify any page or paragraph in the IMF report where GoldBod is named as the entity responsible for losses incurred by the Bank of Ghana, insisting the Fund attributed the 2024 and 2025 figures to the central bank’s programme rather than to the Board’s own accounts.
He has pointed to the Auditor-General’s report for the year ended 31 December 2025, which he says recorded a GH¢907 million operational surplus and an overall surplus above GH¢5.4 billion for GoldBod.
Private legal practitioner Oliver Barker-Vormawor has taken the same view, agreeing that the IMF documented the loss against the central bank and not the Gold Board. GoldBod announced on 11 August that it had ended its role as buying agent for the Bank of Ghana and had stopped receiving central bank funds for gold purchases in March, shifting instead to financing raised from commercial banks and off-takers.
Minority Demands Parliamentary Inquiry Into GoldBod
The Minority Leader Afenyo-Markin argues the attribution question misses the substance, holding that whichever balance sheet ultimately carries the loss, the money is public and open to parliamentary scrutiny.
“I remain focused,” he wrote on Facebook on 22 August, before restating his intention to initiate a full inquiry with the caucus.
Deputy Minority Leader Patricia Appiagyei formalised that demand in a statement the same day, calling on GoldBod to appear before a parliamentary inquiry and reconcile the IMF’s figures with its audited financial statements.
She sought “a full and transparent reconciliation” of the two sets of accounts and rejected as false the personal characterisations Mr Gyamfi directed at caucus members between 17 and 22 August, among them a description of the Minority Leader as an extortionist. Mr Gyamfi has invited Afenyo-Markin to sue and said he stands ready to defend the claim in court.
Emergency Sitting Gives The Minority Its Opening
Speaker Alban Bagbin recalled the House on 12 August under Order 58(4) of the Standing Orders, directing members to sit from noon on Monday, 24 August, through Friday, 28 August, at Parliament House in Accra. He did not specify the business that prompted the recall, which came less than two weeks after Parliament adjourned sine die on 31 July, months ahead of the scheduled October return.
Supreme Court And Ministerial Nominees Expected To Feature
The sitting also marks the first outing for James Agalga, MP for Builsa North, as Majority Leader, following Mahama Ayariga’s move to a ministerial nomination in the August reshuffle. For the Minority, the compressed calendar offers a narrow window to convert a press war into a formal committee process, and Bawumia’s intervention signals that the party leadership expects the caucus to use it as the NPP rebuilds towards the 2028 general election.
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