Ghana’s Gold Board is seeking to draw a sharp line between the country’s previous gold-purchasing arrangements and the more centralised system now being built under GoldBod, as Chief Executive Sammy Gyamfi says some companies that participated in state-backed gold buying under the previous New Patriotic Party administration operated without formal contracts.
The claim, made by Mr Gyamfi during discussions on GoldBod’s operations, adds a governance dimension to an already politically contested debate over how Ghana buys, finances, processes and exports gold. At the same time, the institution says 7.10 metric tonnes of gold it has purchased are currently being refined in Ghana, part of a wider attempt to retain more of the value generated by the country’s most important mineral.
Mr Gyamfi’s contention about earlier arrangements should be treated as an allegation by the GoldBod chief rather than an independently established finding. The broader historical framework, however, shows that the Precious Minerals Marketing Company had authority to buy and sell precious minerals and appoint licensed buying agents, while the present GoldBod regime has imposed a more detailed licensing and contractual architecture around buyers, aggregators and financing.
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That distinction matters because holding a licence and having a commercial contract are not necessarily the same thing. A licence gives a company regulatory authority to operate, while a contract can define financing, delivery obligations, repayment requirements, pricing, security and responsibility if something goes wrong.
GoldBod has sought to formalise those relationships further. Its July trade-financing rules require eligible Tier 2 buyers seeking financing through aggregators to undergo Know-Your-Customer, due-diligence and creditworthiness checks and to sign trade-financing agreements setting out repayment and compliance obligations before funds are released.
The framework also requires beneficiaries to provide approved security instruments covering between 10% and 50% of financing depending on their credit assessment. For a state institution dealing with large amounts of revolving capital, the significance is straightforward: public or state-backed funds need a clear trail showing who received money, for what purpose, under what conditions and how repayment is secured.
GoldBod’s current licensing universe is already large. Deputy Finance Minister Thomas Ampem Nyarko told Parliament that 1,184 gold-buying companies had been licensed as of May 31, comprising two aggregators, 67 self-financing aggregators, 736 Tier 2 buyers and 379 Tier 1 buyers.
Those companies are required under the new regime to operate within a centrally regulated chain. GoldBod has said licensed buyers purchase from authorised miners, while the institution retains the central role in aggregation, processing and export, a structure intended to strengthen oversight over gold volumes and the foreign exchange generated from them.
The policy is now moving beyond the question of who buys the gold to what happens to it after purchase. Mr Gyamfi said 7.10 metric tonnes acquired by GoldBod are currently being refined domestically rather than being sent abroad in the same form for processing.
“7.1 metric tonnes of the gold bought by GoldBod is now being refined in Ghana,” he said, arguing that refining fees that might otherwise have accrued to foreign processing centres are instead remaining in the local economy.
That is potentially important for a country that has for decades been a major gold producer but has captured only part of the value generated further down the chain. Mining produces export earnings, but assaying, refining, certification, bullion production, logistics and trading can generate additional income after gold leaves the mine.
GoldBod’s strategy is therefore increasingly built around three interconnected objectives: formalising who can buy gold, improving the ability to trace where that gold originates and retaining a larger proportion of processing activity within Ghana. The institution says it is profiling licensed buyers to establish the sources of gold entering the formal market.
The traceability element could ultimately prove more important than the licensing numbers. Ghana has struggled for years with the difficulty of separating legitimately produced small-scale gold from output linked to illegal mining once the metal enters trading networks.
GoldBod has said its planned traceability system will eventually use technologies including unique identification, scanning and other digital tools to follow gold through the supply chain. Mr Gyamfi has previously acknowledged that licensed buyers traditionally lacked the technology to establish whether gold delivered to their offices had been responsibly mined.
Local refining could provide another layer of control while strengthening value addition. Mr Gyamfi pointed to Gold Coast Refinery’s London Bullion Market Association accreditation as evidence that Ghana is developing infrastructure capable of connecting locally processed gold with internationally recognised standards.
The government has also widened the local-processing strategy into the large-scale mining sector. An agreement reached with the Ghana Chamber of Mines requires large-scale producers to sell 30% of their output locally to GoldBod in doré form at a 0.55% discount, with purchases conducted in cedis and the gold intended for local refining before entering the reserve accumulation framework.
This is a more ambitious model than simply creating another state gold trader. It seeks to place GoldBod at the intersection of licensing, financing, aggregation, pricing, refining, export and reserve accumulation, giving the institution considerable influence over Ghana’s gold economy.
That concentration of responsibility also raises the standard of transparency required. The stronger GoldBod’s control over the market becomes, the more important it will be for the institution to publish clear information on financing agreements, counterparties, volumes, pricing margins, refining costs and the commercial outcomes generated from each stage of the chain.
The same principle applies to Mr Gyamfi’s allegations about previous arrangements. If companies were indeed operating under state gold-purchasing programmes without formal contracts, the strongest way to establish that would be through publication of the relevant historical documents, financing records and audit findings rather than political assertion alone.
Ghana’s gold reforms are ultimately attempting to answer a longstanding economic question: why should one of the world’s major gold-producing countries capture only a fraction of the value created after the metal is mined?
Refining 7.10 tonnes locally is one answer. Better contracts, stronger traceability and clearer accountability over those entrusted with buying the gold will have to provide the others.
NorvanReports