IMANI’s Cudjoe: GoldBod Losses Demand Full Disclosure—‘Progress Made, But Transparency Is Key!
Franklin Cudjoe, President of IMANI Africa, says that the government’s handling of Ghana’s gold trading system has gotten better in clear ways. However, he says that any losses that happen under the Ghana Gold Board, or GoldBod, must be fully and openly explained.
Mr. Cudjoe wrote on Facebook that he was happy with the Mahama administration, GoldBod, the Bank of Ghana, and the Ministry of Finance for learning from the problems with the Gold-for-Oil program and making changes to avoid them in the future. He agreed that these changes show that the system is being run better.
He did, however, warn that the current GoldBod operating model still puts the framework at risk of losing money on transactions, especially those that involve changing cedis into US dollars. Mr. Cudjoe said that even if GoldBod sees itself as just a middleman between gold aggregators and the central bank, these kinds of losses are unavoidable because of how the system works.
He said that losses are still losses, no matter what they are called, and that the reported US$214 million is big enough to need full disclosure. He said that this should include clear information about when, where, and how the losses happened, as well as the names of the buyers involved. He says that this level of openness is necessary to stop future losses and stop people from misusing insider information.
Mr. Cudjoe also said that the Bank of Ghana needs to take responsibility by explaining the losses and making sure they don’t happen again. He was worried that the issue only came to light because of information released by the International Monetary Fund, not because Ghana’s own institutions were being open about it.
