Ghana has avoided hundreds of millions of dollars in annual borrowing costs due to foreign exchange inflows generated by the Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod), according to a new academic report assessing the programme’s macroeconomic impact.
The study, authored by economists from the University of Ghana, estimates that GoldBod-enabled ASM gold exports in 2025 amounted to US$10.8 billion in non-debt foreign exchange inflows. If Ghana had raised equivalent funds through external borrowing, the country would have incurred annual interest costs of between US$756 million and US$1.08 billion, assuming borrowing rates of 7 to 10 percent.
Even when focusing only on the portion of exports plausibly linked to reduced smuggling, the report estimates that Ghana avoided between US$266 million and US$380 million in annual interest payments—savings that will recur each year if formalisation is sustained.
The inflows contributed significantly to Ghana’s macroeconomic performance in 2025, including a build-up of international reserves to approximately US$11–12 billion, exchange-rate stabilisation and appreciation relative to IMF projections, and a reduction in the domestic cost of servicing external debt by about GHS 6.2 billion.
The report also links GoldBod-supported forex inflows to lower import costs—estimated at GHS 50.6 billion between January and October 2025—and declining inflation through reduced exchange-rate pass-through.
While acknowledging policy-related costs, the authors estimate the true economic cost of GoldBod operations—such as fees, purity losses, and offtake discounts—at around 2.5 percent of gold value, far below public perceptions driven by headline loss figures.
The report recommends sustaining competitive gold pricing to prevent a return of smuggling, improving transparency in BoG reporting, and treating GoldBod’s policy costs as a quasi-fiscal expense funded through the national budget.
Overall, the study describes GoldBod as a high-return policy intervention, playing a central role in formalising Ghana’s gold sector and reinforcing macroeconomic stability.
