Serious concerns are emerging over the transparency of Ghana’s State-owned gold-trading monopoly, GoldBod, as Bright Simons accuses the institution of withholding crucial financial information regarding its core operations in the small-scale and artisanal mining sector.
According to Mr, Simons, who have reviewed GoldBod’s latest quarterly report, the company has failed to disclose the most fundamental indicators of its performance, specifically, the value of gold it purchased and sold on behalf of the Bank of Ghana (BoG), the margins earned from those trades, and the identities of its key transaction partners.
Instead, GoldBod reported less than $60 million in fees, offering what observers describe as an incomplete picture of its financial activities. The report does not detail the total funds advanced by the Bank of Ghana for gold purchases, nor does it outline how those funds were deployed.
He further says, the company appears to present itself “merely as a service provider” to the central bank and private gold aggregators, despite legislation that mandates it to serve as the principal actor in Ghana’s domestic gold market.
“It is refusing to publish its actual trading margins,” one critic noted. “How much gold did it buy? How much did it pay? How much was that gold sold for — and to whom? These are the most important performance data points.”
The quarterly publication also reportedly omits information on which gold aggregators sold to GoldBod and the sources of their gold, details considered essential for accountability in a sector historically fraught with opacity, illicit trade, and exploitation.
GoldBod’s reluctance to publish its trading activities has prompted calls for heightened scrutiny, particularly of the institution’s leadership. Some stakeholders argue that the Chief Executive Officer, dubbed the “GoldBossu,” must be pressed for answers on why Ghana’s premier gold-trading entity is withholding the information that matters most.