Ghana is set to replace the Bank of Ghana’s reference rate with the international Bloomberg rate for gold transactions as the government moves to make gold pricing more market-driven and strengthen the country’s foreign reserve accumulation.
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Atta Issah, Member of Parliament for Sagnarigu and a member of the Finance Committee, said the new pricing system would apply to transactions involving commercial banks, the Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod), off-takers and small scale miners.
“The lesson learnt here is that there won’t be any incentive for us to use the BoG rate as reference,” Issah said.
“The bankers, GoldBod and the off-takers will do a direct negotiation with small-scale miners, and no BoG rate will be needed.
Now we’ll trade at Bloomberg rate, not BoG rate, even though the Central Bank will be managing the reserve end of things.”
The change comes as Ghana implements the Ghana Accelerated National Reserve Accumulation Programme (GANRAP), which aims to build the country’s foreign reserves to 15 months of import cover by the end of 2028 through structured gold purchases from small- and large-scale miners.
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Issah said the government was also at the final stage of procuring a traceability system to track the origin of gold entering the formal supply chain.
“We are currently at the final stage of the procurement process for the traceability mechanism to trace the source of gold,” he said. “When you know the source, negotiation is better.”
The system is expected to improve transparency in the gold trade and strengthen Ghana’s position when negotiating with international buyers and refiners.
Issah also acknowledged concerns over the environmental damage caused by illegal small-scale mining, known locally as galamsey.
“I appreciate the concerns raised by the IMF on the environmental impact,” he said, adding that Ghana needed to protect its environment while creating alternative livelihoods for mining communities.
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“You can’t solve galamsey with legislation or enforcement. It has to do with social and cocommunity-levelpproaches,” he said.
The pricing reform, combined with improved traceability, is expected to support Ghana’s efforts to formalise gold trading while strengthening the country’s foreign exchange reserves.
