Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod), Sammy Gyamfi, has accused the New Patriotic Party (NPP) of double standards in its criticism of financial costs associated with Ghana’s Domestic Gold Purchase Programme, arguing that the party previously defended similar costs incurred under the Gold-for-Oil (G4O) programme.
Mr Gyamfi’s comments come against the backdrop of an earlier response by the NPP to allegations by IMANI Africa that the G4O programme had suffered financial leakages amounting to GH¢7.2 billion.
In a statement dated September 29, 2025, the NPP rejected the allegations, describing them as misleading and unsupported by verifiable financial records.
“No evidence of diversion or leakage exists. The figure quoted by IMANI is a distortion of audited financial data,” the party stated.
However, Mr Gyamfi has now relied on that same statement to challenge the NPP’s current criticism of losses associated with the Domestic Gold Purchase Programme.
Speaking on Newsfile on JoyNews on Saturday, August 22, Mr Gyamfi said the NPP in responding to IMANI Africa, argued that the costs incurred by the Bank of Ghana (BoG) under the Gold-for-Oil programme represented foreign exchange liquidity support and were not evidence of financial mismanagement or corruption.
“BOG transparently reported its foreign liquidity support cost,” Mr Gyamfi quoted the NPP statement as saying.
He explained that the NPP had argued that the expenditure was necessary to provide foreign exchange liquidity to facilitate the importation of petroleum products under the G4O programme.
Mr Gyamfi further quoted the NPP as saying that the costs were “not diversions of funds, but the cost of stabilizing forex supply to facilitate Gold-for-Oil imports.”
He said the party had also pointed to the traceability of the Bank of Ghana’s seed capital and the publication of the reported costs in the central bank’s audited financial statements.
According to Mr Gyamfi, the NPP further maintained at the time that there was no evidence of corruption or leakage under the programme.
“The verifiable facts are: no evidence exists of the alleged leakage,” he quoted the party as saying.
Mr Gyamfi therefore questioned why the NPP was now treating financial costs associated with the Domestic Gold Purchase Programme as evidence of recklessness or mismanagement.
“These are the words of the New Patriotic Party. And today, they have forgotten,” he said.
He argued that the same principle the NPP applied in defending the G4O programme should be used in assessing the Domestic Gold Purchase Programme.
Mr Gyamfi said accounting losses should not be considered in isolation without examining the broader economic benefits generated by the programme.
“We should assess them not only on the basis of the accounting losses but the economic benefits that are generated,” he said.
He, however, acknowledged that there was a legitimate basis for examining whether the programme could have achieved the same economic objectives at a lower cost.
“Without prejudice to the call for us to look at whether or not they could have done so or achieved the same thing at the lower cost,” he added.
Mr Gyamfi maintained that the NPP’s previous defence of the G4O programme demonstrates that financial costs do not, on their own, constitute proof of corruption or financial mismanagement.
He consequently called on the party to be consistent in its assessment of the Domestic Gold Purchase Programme and to distinguish between accounting costs and evidence of actual financial wrongdoing.
