Two prominent voices have pushed back against criticism of the Bank of Ghana’s (BoG) 2025 financial losses, arguing that the GH¢15.63 billion deficit should be understood as the cost of deliberate policy choices that delivered measurable benefits for Ghanaians rather than a sign of institutional failure.
Prof Ransford Gyampo, Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Shippers Authority (GSA), took to social media to reframe the debate, saying he would not characterise what the central bank spent as a loss at all. The political scientist drew a parallel between capital expenditure and policy intervention, arguing that money deployed to restore stability was more accurately described as an investment.
“Spending to build a house, for instance, is not a loss. It is called an investment. Similarly, spending to achieve economic stability and reduced inflation from 54% to 3.8% isn’t a loss. If the outcome of this so-called loss makes Ghanaians happy, so be it,” he wrote.
His post generated mixed reactions online, with supporters citing the marked improvement in economic indicators while critics questioned whether the scale of losses was avoidable.
Nelson Cudjoe Kuagbedzi, Head of Finance at Merban Capital, offered a more detailed financial analysis on JoyNews’ AM Show, explaining that the losses were a direct product of the central bank’s efforts to mop up excess liquidity built up in the financial system during an extended period of expansionary government spending.
He said the Bank issued short-term bills at high interest rates to draw money out of circulation, but because its existing assets, particularly restructured government securities following the Domestic Debt Exchange Programme (DDEP), were yielding relatively low returns, it was paying out more than it was earning. That gap accounted for the sharp rise in liquidity management costs from approximately GH¢8 billion in 2024 to around GH¢16 billion in 2025.
“The gains that the economy has achieved come at a cost,” he said, adding that central banks globally are not assessed by their balance sheets alone but by whether they achieve their core mandate of price stability and financial system soundness.
Kuagbedzi also described the economic conditions inherited at the end of 2024 as fragile, pointing to inflation of 23.8 percent, a cedi that had depreciated by about 20 percent, lending rates above 30 percent and non-performing loans running at around 22 percent. He said those conditions made aggressive policy action unavoidable.
“We must not judge the performance of a central bank based on their balance sheet, but we must judge them based on the mandate that they are supposed to achieve,” he said.
The Bank of Ghana posted the GH¢15.63 billion loss for the year ended December 31, 2025, a 65 percent increase from the GH¢9.49 billion loss recorded in 2024. The central bank has maintained that the losses reflect the cost of achieving price stability, exchange rate resilience and reserve accumulation, not mismanagement.
