Governor of the Bank of Ghana, Dr Johnson Asiama
Ghana’s gold holdings dropped sharply from 37.1 tonnes in Q3 2025 to 18.6 tonnes in Q4 2025, a net decline of 18.5 tonnes (roughly 50%), suggesting a one-time conversion rather than a gradual reserve rebalancing.
The Bank of Ghana’s own footnote attests to the fact that some of the gold stock was monetized into cash FX and reflected in Gross International Reserves.
The Governor of the Bank of Ghana, Dr Johnson Asiama, said, “we noticed that most of our peers were holding between 20% and 25% as gold at the time we were holding over 40.”
“We decided to diversify our portfolio as a result. Dividends from FX are increasing and helping to build up reserves.”
This explains why gold value fell from USD 3.43 billion to USD 2.68 billion, while GIR rose from USD 11.60 billion to USD 13.83 billion and Net International Reserves increased from USD 9.40 billion to USD 11.71 billion over the same period.
The conversion was driven by acute currency stabilization pressures, as the cedi experienced extreme volatility in 2025, with the USD/GHS rate swinging between 15.53, 10.28, 12.42, and 10.45, forcing the central bank to prioritise immediately deployable foreign exchange over holding gold as a vault asset.
Prof Isaac Boadi claims that exchange-rate data and significant external flows reveal a basic inconsistency in the Governor’s actions.
Ghana’s economy was generating more foreign exchange than it was spending in 2025, as evidenced by its current account surplus of USD 9.08 billion (8.1% of GDP) and trade surplus of USD 13.66 billion.
Such circumstances should naturally replenish reserves and lessen the need to liquidate strategic assets, according to standard central bank reasoning.
Despite robust trade flows, increasing IMF credibility, and record gold prices, the Bank of Ghana reduced its gold holdings by 50% during that time, from 37.1 to 18.6 tonnes, converting 18.5 tonnes in a single quarter.
Professor Isaac Boadi emphasises that such a drastic drawdown would only be warranted in the event of one or more abnormal circumstances, such as the Bank of Ghana not receiving foreign exchange inflows, FX outflows exceeding reserves despite the surplus, the surplus itself being non-liquid or sterilized, or the Bank urgently needing deployable foreign exchange to handle unreported pressures.
This implies that even with the headline current-account surplus, the Bank’s immediate liquidity needs could not be met by the surplus alone.
Worse still, the exchange rate failed to stabilise sustainably, with the cedi swinging sharply in 2025 (15.53 to 10.28 to 12.42 to 10.45) before depreciating again to 10.88 in January 2026, suggesting the gold was burned on short-term FX intervention rather than structural reform.
With a strong balance of payments position, this scale and speed of gold liquidation was neither necessary nor justified, turning a liquidity tool into a strategic reserve depletion.
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Source:
www.ghanaweb.com
