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Policy Analyst and Vice-President of IMANI Centre for Policy and Education, Mr. Bright Simons, has slammed on Gold Board for attempting to undermine the credibility of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Bright Simons argued that GoldBod’s aggressive defensive posture against the IMF’s recent findings regarding operational losses is not only strategic suicide but a direct threat to the perceived stability of Ghana’s economic recovery.
By attempting to discredit the very institution that provides the data transparency local analysts are often denied, GoldBod risks alienating the global financial community and casting a long shadow of doubt over the country’s broader fiscal achievements under the current Extended Credit Facility (ECF).
“I am not sure the GoldBod is being strategic when it sets out to discredit the IMF because doing so casts doubt on the good stuff the IMF is saying about the economy too. Well, it is our own governments that choose to give data to the IMF that they refuse to share with local institutions. And now their followers want to blame us because we have to rely on IMF data to scrutinize government policies?”Mr. Bright Simons
This escalating dispute centers on the 5th ECF review, where the IMF flagged significant concerns regarding the Bank of Ghana (BoG) and GoldBod’s fiscal management, specifically highlighting losses that the central bank is reportedly attempting to mask through creative “accounting treatments.”
Simons contended that the government’s habit of hoarding critical data from local civil society organizations, while simultaneously feeding that same data to the IMF, makes the Fund’s reports the only reliable barometer for public scrutiny.
Consequently, any attempt by state agencies to delegitimize IMF data when it proves inconvenient is viewed as a hypocritical maneuver that undermines the “good stuff” the IMF is saying about the economy, effectively jeopardizing the investor confidence that the government has fought so hard to rebuild.
A deep dive into the extractive governance framework reveals a troubling trend of “subsuming” policy costs under revaluation gains to hide the true price of the Gold for Oil and Gold Purchase programs.
According to Bright Simons, the Bank of Ghana is currently focused on finding a label to classify losses as something else rather than being transparent about the fiscal subsidies inherent in these operations.
The IMF report suggests that these losses stem from the tension between “commercial logic and policy goals,” where GoldBod appears to time gold sales not for profit maximization, but to meet the central bank’s urgent FX liquidity and reporting needs.
This “tolerance for losses” is a structural flaw that Simons insists must be addressed by having the Finance Ministry assume direct coverage of these costs.
The IMF’s scrutiny is particularly focused on the erosion of the central bank’s balance sheet; a situation Simons described as a “saga” requiring urgent public attention.
He warns that the BoG should “bear in mind that it is the same IMF that shaped the accounting standards for Central Banks” globally.
Therefore, attempting to outmaneuver the Fund through technical jargon is unlikely to succeed and only serves to highlight the lack of internal accountability.
The analyst suggests that the current high price of gold is masking deep-seated inefficiencies, as even “uneconomical small mines” can currently operate profitably, creating a false sense of security regarding the program’s long-term sustainability.
Beyond the accounting irregularities, Simons raises the alarm over a dangerous level of concentration on both the buying and selling sides of the GoldBod ecosystem.
Reports indicate that a singular entity, Bawa Rock, has received “billions of cedis plus bonuses” to facilitate local purchases, while the export side is dominated by just two or three companies in India and the UAE.
This lack of diversification in the offtake agreement has reportedly “boosted their negotiating leverage for discounts,” potentially leading to further revenue leakages that are currently hidden by record-high world gold prices.
Simons notes that while 2024 exports seem unprecedented, the “2018 haul comes close” when adjusted for inflation and price spikes.
The refusal of Gold Board to release granular data on these concentrations prevents a thorough risk assessment by independent analysts.
Simons pointed out that “more research is needed on the whole concentration issue,” but the state’s opacity remains a significant barrier. The current model does not actually “generate” gold dollars that remains the work of the miners, but rather reroutes those dollars from commercial banks to the BoG.
While this is intended to plug leakages, the lack of transparency means the public cannot verify if the “negotiating leverage” afforded to foreign off-takers is actually draining the state’s coffers through excessive discounts and opaque bonus structures.
The counter-attack by GoldBod against the IMF is characterized by Simons as an unhealthy distraction from the necessary task of “learning, unlearning, and relearning” as new economic data emerges.
He asserted that the IMF is actually “keen to project Ghana as a success story,” and if they have raised “serious concerns,” it is because the risks to the extractive sector’s contribution to the national economy are too large to ignore.
Discrediting the messenger does nothing to fix the underlying fiscal “slippages” that activists and CSOs are now monitoring with increased vigilance.
Ultimately, the policy analyst calls for a shift in focus from PR-driven denials to substantive policy reform.
He suggested that the government must stop treating the IMF’s findings as an adversarial attack and instead use them as a roadmap for “preventing slippages” in the gold sector.
For the mining and extractive industry to truly benefit the Ghanaian people, there must be a move away from “accounting treatments” and toward a system where the Finance Ministry takes responsibility for the fiscal subsidies currently weighing down the Bank of Ghana’s credibility.
For now, Simons argued, the benefit of the doubt is wearing thin as the gap between state narratives and international reports continues to widen.
Source:Bless Banir Yaraye
