FACT-CHECK: Abena Osei-Asare’s claim that BoG’s 2025 financial report understates $1.7bn gold trade loss FALSE

A claim made by Abena Osei-Asare, a former Finance Ministry official and head of Parliament's Public Accounts Committee, has been debunked by JoyNews Research. The statement in question alleged that the Bank of Ghana (BoG) had understated the losses from its Domestic Gold Purchase Programme (DGPP), which the IMF estimated to be $1.7 billion in 2025.

Osei-Asare argued that BoG reported only $214 million in losses, suggesting a significant underreporting of the true financial impact. However, JoyNews Research found this claim to be false. When examined closely, the numbers cited in Osei-Asare's claim do not align, as she compared a comprehensive IMF assessment of the DGPP with a narrower figure from the IMF itself, and misattributed the smaller number to BoG's financial statements for the entire year.

According to BoG's 2025 financial statements, the institution reported a net loss of approximately GH¢9.1 billion ($871 million) on gold transactions. This loss was broken down into two components: GH¢8.85 billion from gold for reserves (G4R) and GH¢0.20 billion from gold for oil (G4O), the latter of which had been discontinued in March 2025.

The $214 million figure that Osei-Asare cited was actually an IMF estimate, not a BoG figure, and specifically pertained to the first three quarters of 2025. This estimate covered only part of the year and related exclusively to artisanal and small-scale doré gold transactions. The full-year loss reported by BoG was in line with the $1.7 billion figure provided by the IMF, indicating that the central bank did not understate the losses associated with the DGPP.