Beyond that, we are aware of the poor performance of the gold purchasing scheme. After beginning to lend money to PMMC for the purchase of gold, Bank of Ghana realized losses and chose not to continue. As a result, the PMMC has not received funding to purchase gold.

He went on to say that at one point, for almost a month, the central bank had not provided funds for gold to be purchased, which caused a lot of chaos in which the gold producers were unable to sell their gold and people were instead smuggling it and purchasing it at a discount because the market had been so severely distorted.

Because the government previously levied a 1% tax, the PMMC levied a 0.24 % tax, and the Minerals Commission levied a 2% tax, we are losing tax money on the gold side. We collectively accounted for more than 2.4 and 2.5 percent of all shipped gold.

“The benefits that were coming to the state were kicked out with the implementation of the gold for oil policy, and the state is losing that revenue. That transaction does not generate any revenue for Bank of Ghana. Therefore, what we truly need to measure—and are still expecting to do—is how much the state has lost as a result of the gold for oil exchanges.

He emphasized the need for quantification so that we would be aware of the amounts of gold being smuggled out of the nation and the taxes we were not receiving as a result of the implementation of the program.

He also bemoaned the fact that at one point the Bank of Ghana was buying gold on the local market at the price of the international market.

“If you buy direct gold at the price of the world market, what that means is that you have to pay for that when they refine it and there are losses,” he stated. How big of a loss did the Bank of Ghana incur while purchasing the gold at the price on the global market?