The Minority in Parliament has dismissed claims that it is opposed to the creation of the Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod), saying its criticism is not of the idea itself, but of what it describes as the governing NDC’s incompetent and opaque implementation of a policy lifted from the NPP’s 2024 manifesto.

“The impression is being created that the Minority, or the NPP as a whole, is fundamentally opposed to GoldBod. Nothing could be further from the truth,” the Minority said at a press briefing on Tuesday, 18 August 2026.

According to the group, the governing NDC’s decision to establish GoldBod was an adoption of the NPP flagbearer Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia’s plan titled “Stabilising the Cedi Through Gold Purchase Programme.”

“We welcome what we thought was the NDC’s brave and sincere decision to adopt and implement a policy they discovered in the NPP’s 2024 Manifesto… Our disappointment is that, having borrowed the policy, they failed to understand it and are now making an expensive mess of it,” the Minority stated.

Bare pledge to a detailed plan

The Minority contrasted the two parties’ 2024 manifestos, noting that the NDC’s Resetting Ghana manifesto, launched six days after the NPP’s, contained only “a bare pledge to ‘set up a Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod) to regulate and restructure small-scale mining.’ That was all.”

By contrast, it said, in paragraphs 40-45 of Dr. Bawumia’s manifesto launch address of 18 August 2024, he presented “a coherent plan to consolidate Ghana’s gold-purchasing arrangements, expand foreign-exchange reserves and anchor currency and macroeconomic stability.”

Dr. Bawumia, the statement added, had warned, drawing on lessons from the Domestic Gold Purchase Programme introduced in 2022, that the programme “must be commercially sound and never become a loss-making venture.”

“So, let us be clear: we cannot oppose a policy conceived and championed by our own presidential candidate as a solution to Ghana’s chronic macroeconomic instability. Indeed, imitation is said to be the sincerest form of flattery.

“But when imitation is combined with incompetence, shadiness, secrecy and at a high cost to the state, we have a responsibility to ensure it is fixed,” the Minority said.

Not against reserves, but against waste

The Minority stressed its argument is not against building gold reserves, acknowledging that the Domestic Gold Purchase Programme did produce benefits.

“Ghana achieved substantial reserve accumulation during the period, which contributed to improvements in external buffers and supported broader macroeconomic stability,” it said.

The question, therefore, is not whether Ghana should purchase gold. The key questions, according to the Minority, are: “at what cost, under what governance arrangements, with whose money, under whose risk, and with what accountability?”

“No serious policymaker should argue that because a policy produces benefits, its costs no longer matter. Foreign reserves are important. That does not provide a blank cheque for avoidable trading losses.”

The Minority said the proper test for GoldBod is “whether the policy objectives were achieved efficiently, prudently and at acceptable risk to the Ghanaian public.”

Citing an IMF assessment, the Minority said a finding of GH¢22 billion in losses makes that question “unavoidable.”