In the final quarter of 2025, the Bank of Ghana (BoG) liquidated approximately 18.5 tonnes of the country’s gold reserves representing roughly half of its then total gold holdings at a price of USD 3,500 per ounce, generating estimated gross proceeds of approximately USD 2.22 billion. Barely three months after, the government unveiled the Ghana Accelerated National Reserve Accumulation Policy (GHANRAP) 2026–2028, announcing plans to repurchase the same quantity at USD 5,500 per ounce, at an estimated cost of USD 3.49 billion. The implied financial cost of this round-trip transaction is approximately USD 1.27 billion.
This paper, issued by the Institute of Political Studies–Ghana (IPS-Ghana), examines the strategic deficit, macroeconomic, and economic governance implications of this decision. It contextualises the transaction against global gold market trends, Ghana’s external reserves position, inflationary pressures, exchange rate dynamics, and the country’s ongoing fiscal consolidation under an IMF supported programme. It also incorporates risks arising from geopolitical disruptions to global energy markets. The analysis raises serious questions about policy coherence and calls for greater transparency in the management of Ghana’s national reserves.
Core Finding:
A central bank that sold gold at USD 3,500/oz while prices were rising, then announced a policy to buy it back at USD 5,500/oz three months later, has not demonstrated the characteristics of a disciplined, long horizon reserve manager. The $1.27 billion implied cost demands rigorous public accounting and scrutiny.
1. The Q4 2025 Gold Sale
In the fourth quarter of 2025, the Bank of Ghana executed a sale of approximately 18.5 metric tonnes of gold from its official reserves. At the prevailing transacted price of USD 3,500 per ounce, and with one metric tonne equal to approximately 32,150.7 troy ounces, the total proceeds from the sale amounted to roughly USD 2.22 billion.The timing of this transaction is deeply troubling on several grounds:
•Gold prices had been in a sustained uptrend throughout 2024 and into 2025, driven by global safe-haven demand amid geopolitical uncertainty, US dollar depreciation concerns, and central bank buying worldwide. The BoG’s own data shows prices rising from USD 2,568/oz in September 2024 to USD 3,666.52/oz in September 2025.
•Further, the Bank of Ghana’s own data records international gold prices rising from USD 4,054/oz in October 2025 to USD 4,082 in November and USD 4,316 in December 2025 meaning the sale at USD 3,500/oz was executed at a significant discount to contemporaneous market prices. This either implies forward sales contracts struck at earlier, lower prices, or a significant mark to market loss on execution.
•The Bank of Ghana is yet to provide a justification on why liquidation of nearly half of its gold reserves was necessary at this juncture, when reserves were recovering and the broader macroeconomic picture was soundly improving.
•Central banks globally were net buyers of gold in 2024–2025, with World Gold Council data showing record official sector accumulation. Ghana, it thus appears was surprisingly swimming against the tide of global reserve management strategy.
Critical question: If gold prices in Q4 2025 had risen to USD 4,054–4,316/oz per the BoG’s own data, a sale transacted at USD 3,500/oz implies either forward contracts struck months earlier (at a price well below the market), or execution at a discount. Neither scenario is consistent with sound reserve management. The Bank of Ghana must publicly clarify the pricing mechanism and forecast regime in practice.
2. The Ghana Accelerated National Reserve Accumulation Policy (GHANRAP) 2026–2028
Within approximately three months of the gold sale, the government unveiled GHANRAP 2026–2028, which provides, inter alia, for the repurchase of the 18.5 tonnes sold in Q4 2025 at a price of USD 5,500 per troy ounce. At 18.5 metric tonnes (approximately 594,787 troy ounces), the repurchase would cost the state approximately USD 3.27 billion at spot, or USD 3.49 billion using the policy’s stated per ounce figure.
The policy framework thus, in principle remains welcome, as reserve accumulation is a legitimate and important objective for a post crisis economy aiming to rebuild external buffers. Yet GHANRAP’s credibility is severely undermined by the sequence of events the government announces a policy to buy back, at a 57% premium, the same asset it sold just months earlier. The policy itself implicitly acknowledges that the earlier sale was premature or simply put, a bemusing product of poor timing.
3. Five Critical Questions for the Bank of Ghana
What Necessitated the Sale?
The Bank of Ghana has not publicly articulated the operational necessity for the Q4 2025 gold sale. In classical reserve management theory, gold is disposed of under one of a limited number of circumstances: urgent liquidity needs that cannot be met through other instruments; a deliberate rebalancing of the reserve portfolio away from non yielding assets; or a currency defence operation. None of these explanations appears consistent with Ghana’s situation in Q4 2025, while:
•Gross international reserves had recovered to approximately USD 9–11 billion a substantial buffer by the standards of a recovering economy.
•Ghana was operating under an IMF programme that provides structured liquidity support.
•Treasury bill rates had fallen sharply, indicating domestic liquidity conditions had eased considerably;
•The IMF and Ghana’s creditors had reached agreement on debt restructuring, reducing emergency liquidity pressure.
The onus lies on the Bank of Ghana to provide a detailed, public account of why this sale was judged necessary at this time, what alternatives were considered and rejected, and what decision making process was followed to warrant a likely 57% price surge at buyback.
Was the Sale Price a Market Price?
The stated transacted price of USD 3,500 per troy ounce is significantly below the prices recorded in BoG data for the same quarter: USD 4,054 in October, USD 4,082 in November, and USD 4,316 in December 2025. This discrepancy of USD 554–816 per ounce represents a substantial gap. There are two primary explanations, both of which require public disclosure:
•Forward sales contracts:
If the BoG had entered gold forward sales contracts at prices fixed earlier in 2025, those contracts would have obligated it to sell at lower than spot prices. This would raise further questions about why forward sales were entered into while gold was trending upward, and what governance processes approved those hedging positions.
•Opaque bilateral arrangement: If the sale was transacted through a bilateral or private arrangement rather than open market mechanisms, the BoG must confirm this and explain the price discovery process used.
In either case, the gap between the transaction price and contemporaneous market prices must be explained in detail. If the effective loss versus market rates is included, the total financial cost of the round trip transaction could exceed USD 1.8–2.5 billion.
Is GHANRAP Coherent Reserve Policy or Damage Control?
A reserve accumulation policy that begins by announcing repurchase of recently-sold assets at a 57% premium cannot straightforwardly be described as strategic reserve management. It resembles, instead, an acknowledgement that the prior sale was a mistake, dressed in the language of policy. The Institute raises the following concerns about GHANRAP:
•The policy sets a repurchase price that is significantly above both the current market price (USD ~3,500–3,700/oz as of late 2025) and the forward curve, implying either a timeline that extends well into 2027–2028 (by which point gold could plausibly reach USD 5,500) or a willingness to pay above market prices immediately.
•No mention is made of how the repurchase will be funded whether from budget allocations, export receipts, or new sovereign borrowing. Each of these options carries different fiscal and monetary implications that must be disclosed and publicly appraised.
•The policy does not address the governance failure that permitted the original sale, raising the question of whether institutional safeguards against a recurrence are being implemented and strengthened.
What Are the Governance and Accountability Implications?
Reserve management is, in almost every jurisdiction, subject to legal frameworks, internal governance structures, and external oversight mechanisms. Ghana’s Bank of Ghana Act and related regulations govern the management of official reserves. The IPS-Ghana calls for the following accountability measures to be initiated without delay:
•Parliamentary inquiry:
The Finance Committee of Ghana’s Parliament should initiate an urgent inquiry into the decision making process behind the Q4 2025 gold sale, including the persons and bodies who authorised it, the price negotiation process, and the counterparty or counterparties to the transaction.
•Auditor General review
:The Auditor General should conduct an independent review of the financial terms of the sale and compare them against contemporaneous market conditions to establish whether public funds were managed prudently.
•Central bank disclosure: The Bank of Ghana should publish, within 30 days, a detailed operational report explaining the sale, including: internal risk assessments conducted, governing board minutes relevant to the decision, and the precise pricing and settlement mechanism.
•IMF programme review: It should be clarified whether the Q4 2025 gold sale was disclosed to the IMF as part of Ghana’s programme reporting, and whether the IMF condoned or was aware of the transaction.
4. Comparative Perspective: Global Reserve Management Practice
A brief review of international best practice in central bank reserve management provides a useful benchmark against which to assess the BoG’s actions.
Central Banks as Long Horison Gold Holders:
The International Monetary Fund’s Guidelines for Foreign Exchange Reserve Management emphasize that reserve portfolios should be managed according to “liquidity, safety, and return” objectives, in that order. Gold, as a non yielding but highly liquid and universally accepted reserve asset, serves primarily the “safety” function: it hedges against systemic risks, currency crises, and loss of market access. It is not intended as a trading instrument to be bought and sold within short windows based on tactical price views.
The World Gold Council’s 2025 Central Bank Gold Survey found that the majority of central banks globally increased or maintained gold holdings, with only a small minority reducing exposure. Among the motivations cited most frequently: gold’s performance in crisis conditions, its role as a long term store of value, and its ability to diversify reserves away from dollar denominated assets. Ghana’s Q4 2025 sale runs directly counter to this consensus direction.
5. Recommendations
IPS-Ghana calls for the following immediate and medium-term actions:
Immediate Actions (within 30 days)
A. The Bank of Ghana should issue a comprehensive public disclosure statement explaining the full details of the Q4 2025 gold sale, including: the precise transaction date(s), the identity of the counterparty or counterparties, the price determination mechanism, and any contracts (forward, spot, or otherwise) under which the sale was executed.
Parliament’s Finance Committee should convene an emergency hearing, calling BoG Governor and relevant officials to testify on the decision-making process and governance approvals for the sale.
C. The Auditor General’s office should be formally mandated to conduct a forensic review of the transaction’s financial terms within 60 days.
D. The Ministry of Finance should clarify how the GHANRAP 2026–2028 repurchase will be funded, and whether this expenditure is reflected in the 2026 budget framework.
Medium Term Actions (within 6 months)
E. Ghana should strengthen the legal and governance framework governing reserve management decisions, including mandatory prior approval requirements for gold sales above a defined threshold, and mandatory public disclosure of reserve composition changes exceeding 5% of total holdings.
F. GHANRAP should be revised to include explicit performance benchmarks, funding sources, a transparent procurement process for gold acquisition, and independent oversight of implementation.
G. The Bank of Ghana should engage with the IMF to ensure that its reserve management practices; including the recent sale and planned repurchase are fully disclosed and incorporated into programme conditionality assessments.
H. A contingency plan for oil price shock scenarios should be formally developed and communicated, given the elevated risk of energy price volatility and its implications for Ghana’s current account and inflation outlook.
6. Conclusion
Ghana’s macroeconomic recovery from the 2022–2023 crisis has been hard won. Headline inflation has fallen from 54% to single digits. Reserves have been rebuilt to over USD 11 billion. The cedi has stabilised. Interest rates have retreated sharply. These gains reflect genuine sacrifice by ordinary Ghanaians, disciplined monetary policy, and the support of international creditors.
Against that backdrop, the gold sell-off and repurchase sequence is not merely a financial error, it is a potential threat to the credibility of Ghana’s entire macroeconomic recovery narrative. A government and central bank that sold a strategically vital national asset at the wrong time, at a below market price, and then almost immediately announced a policy to buy it back at 57% more, cannot easily claim the mantle of disciplined, long term economic stewardship.
IPS-Ghana does not make this assessment lightly. We recognise that reserve management decisions are often complex, that liquidity pressures are not always visible from the outside, and that not all decisions made under constraint will be optimal. But the magnitude of the implied financial cost USD 1.27 billion or more and the absence of any public justification place a heavy burden of transparency on the Bank of Ghana and the Ministry of Finance that has not yet been discharged.
Ghana can afford neither the financial cost of this transaction, nor the credibility cost of leaving it unexplained. We call on all responsible institutions, the Bank of Ghana, the Ministry of Finance, Parliament, and the Auditor General to act with urgency, transparency, and in the public interest.
IPS-Ghana Position:
Macroeconomic stability is not a number on a spreadsheet it is built on trust. That trust, once eroded by opaque or incoherent policy decisions, is extraordinarily expensive to rebuild. Ghana’s institutions must act now to preserve it.
