Economist George Domfe has accused the Bank of Ghana of becoming too closely aligned with government policy objectives, warning that recent monetary operations and balance sheet decisions raise questions about institutional independence.

“Bank of Ghana has now positioned itself as a political agent of the ruling government,” Domfe said. “They are doing serious bidding of the ruling government and that is where I have a problem.”

He made the comments during an interview on The Forum on Asaase Radio, where he also criticised the bank’s use of open market operations and gold transactions to manage its financial position.

Domfe argued that the central bank had taken steps to avoid what he described as “policy insolvency,” saying it had been compelled to generate additional revenue to cover rising operational costs.

“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.”

He claimed the bank sold more than 19 tonnes of gold in the period under review, arguing that the move helped strengthen its financial position.

“In trying to dodge that kind of tag, they immediately sold over 19 tonnes of our gold,” he said, adding that the transactions generated about GHC9.57 billion in profit after costs.

Domfe said that without the gold-related gains, the central bank’s revenue of about GHC12 billion would not have been sufficient to cover what he estimated at GH¢15.7 billion in open market operation costs.

He further argued that, had the bank failed to offset the gap, the financial impact could have been significantly larger.

“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.

“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.

Domfe also questioned the extent to which improvements in Ghana’s reserves could be attributed to monetary policy, arguing that rising gold inflows were largely driven by global price increases and higher production volumes.