The Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod), Sammy Gyamfi, has highlighted the scale of gold trade leakages Ghana faced before the introduction of reforms to formalise the artisanal and small-scale mining sector.
Mr Gyamfi cited a SWISSAID analysis of UN Comtrade mirror data which found a 229-tonne gap, valued at approximately US$11.4 billion, between Ghana’s reported gold exports and the corresponding imports declared by its trading partners from 2019 to 2023.
He said the discrepancy illustrated how substantial volumes of Ghanaian gold had escaped official export records and the country’s foreign exchange system.
Speaking at the African Minerals Policy Forum – Mining in Motion 2026, he also recalled that recorded small-scale gold exports fell from 75.7 tonnes in 2018 to 53.4 tonnes in 2019 and 39.3 tonnes in 2020.
Following the introduction of a three per cent withholding tax on unprocessed small-scale gold, official exports plunged to 3.4 tonnes in 2021, worth US$185 million.
“The gold beneath our soil had not disappeared, nor had production stopped; the trade had simply moved beyond official view,” Mr Gyamfi said.
He attributed the leakages to fragmented trading arrangements, weak regulatory oversight and ineffective aggregation and foreign exchange repatriation systems, arguing that GoldBod’s reforms were designed to bring more of the country’s gold trade into the formal economy and ensure greater benefits for Ghanaians.