Former Minister’s $1.7bn BoG Loss Propaganda Crashes
… As JoyNews Fact-Check Exposes Claim as False
JoyNews Research has fact-checked a claim by former Minister of State at the Finance Ministry and Chairperson of Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC), Abena Osei-Asare, regarding losses incurred by the Bank of Ghana (BoG) under its Domestic Gold Purchase Programme (DGPP).
According to the fact-check, the claim that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had disclosed a $1.7 billion loss under the programme, while the BoG reported only $214 million, is false and misleading.
Abena Osei-Asare made the claim in a video widely circulated on social media, alleging that the IMF figure represented a loss of about $1.7 billion, equivalent to approximately GH¢22 billion, while the BoG had reported only $214 million in its 2025 financial statements.
“According to the IMF, the Domestic Gold Purchase Programme recorded losses to the tune of $1.7 billion, but if you recall, the Bank of Ghana in their 2025 financial statement reported $214 million as the loss. This loss of $1.7 billion is equivalent to GH¢22 billion, and that is 1.5% of our GDP.”
But the claim, according to JoyNews Research, creates the impression that the central bank deliberately understated the losses associated with its gold purchase programme.
However, checks by JoyNews Research found that the two figures being compared relate to different measures and periods and therefore cannot be directly juxtaposed.
According to the research, the BoG’s 2025 financial statements recorded a net loss on gold deals of approximately GH¢9.1 billion, equivalent to about $871 million at the bank’s end-2025 reference exchange rate of GH¢10.45 to the dollar.
The amount comprised approximately GH¢8.85 billion in net losses on Gold for Reserves (G4R) and GH¢200 million on Gold for Oil (G4O), a programme which was discontinued in March 2025.
JoyNews Research further established that the $214 million figure cited by Abena Osei-Asare does not represent the BoG’s full-year 2025 loss.
Rather, the figure came from an IMF assessment covering only the first three quarters of 2025 and relating specifically to the artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) doré gold transactions component of G4R.
The IMF, in its December 2025 review, estimated that losses from the component had reached $214 million, equivalent to 0.2 per cent of GDP, by the end of the third quarter of 2025.
$1.7bn Figure Was Gross Loss
On the controversial $1.7 billion, or GH¢22 billion, figure, JoyNews Research said a visualised data pack from the BoG showed that the central bank had itself recorded a gross “loss on doré gold” of GH¢21.89 billion.
The figure is broadly equivalent to the $1.7 billion loss cited by the IMF in its August 2026 report.
This means the $1.7 billion figure does not demonstrate that the BoG concealed or understated its gold trading losses, as suggested by Abena Osei-Asare.
Rather, the figures refer to different accounting measures—gross versus net losses—and different reporting contexts.
JoyNews Research therefore concluded that the claim that the BoG reported only $214 million in losses for the entire 2025, while the IMF revealed a $1.7 billion loss, is FALSE.
The research stressed that the $214 million figure was a partial-year IMF estimate covering a specific component of the gold programme, and not the BoG’s audited full-year loss from its gold transactions.
