Policy think-tank Africa Policy Lens has raised fresh concerns over the financial position and policy direction of the Bank of Ghana, after the central bank reported a wider loss for the 2025 financial year despite a sharp rise in operating income.

The bank posted a loss of GHC15.63 billion in 2025, up from GHC9.49 billion a year earlier, according to its latest financial statements. The results showed that while total operating income more than doubled to GHC22.28 billion, this was outweighed by a steep rise in expenses, which climbed to GHC37.91 billion.

A major driver of the cost increase was the “cost of open market operations,” which rose to GHC16.73 billion, alongside losses linked to gold transactions and exchange rate revaluation pressures.

Reacting to the figures on Saturday (9 May) during an interview on The Forum on Asaase Radio, Africa Policy Lens president Dr. George Domfe questioned the central bank’s approach to managing its balance sheet and monetary policy operations.

“Others have even added that Bank of Ghana realising that they were going to be policy insolvent, it had to generate enough revenue to cover the cost of open market operation,” he said.

“If the bank is not able to do that then it becomes policy insolvent and that would have been disastrous.”

Domfe argued that the central bank’s response included significant gold sales aimed at strengthening its financial position, saying more than 19 tonnes of gold were sold in the period under review.

He claimed that, after accounting for purchase costs, the transactions generated about GHC9.57 billion in profit, which he said helped support the bank’s revenue base.

“If you took the total cost of the purchase from the sales then they had a profit of 9.57 billion cedis and so that became a revenue,” he said.

According to him, without the gold-related gains, the central bank’s revenue of about GHC12 billion would not have been sufficient to meet what he put at GHC15.7 billion in open market operation costs.

He further argued that, in such a scenario, the institution could have faced a much larger financial gap.

“If they had not sold the gold and they had been policy insolvent… the total loss would have been in the range of 44 billion cedis,” he said.