The Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod), Sammy Gyamfi, says the newly established agency is poised to bring order and transparency to Ghana’s gold trade by streamlining operations and cracking down on smuggling.
Speaking at the Mining in Motion Summit on Tuesday, he said widespread stakeholder consultations revealed overwhelming support for a single, central body to regulate the gold sector, which he described as previously chaotic and poorly coordinated.
“All the patriotic Ghanaians we engaged and the various civil society organisations saw GoldBod as an imperative—an urgent imperative—to stop this mess,” he said.
According to him, the pre-GoldBod gold trading landscape involved multiple state agencies buying gold with little coordination, creating regulatory loopholes that smugglers readily exploited.
“We now have a central agency streamlining and structuring gold trading, licensing all players involved in the trade and ensuring that everybody adheres to one common code of conduct—on responsible sourcing, legal exports, and so on,” he added.
Gyamfi stressed that this unified approach will not only eliminate irregularities but also ensure that Ghana retains the foreign exchange revenue associated with its gold exports—critical for national development.
“This ensures that we are able to get the forex associated with the gold we buy and the revenue that we desperately need for the development of the country,” he stated.
GoldBod was established under the GoldBod Act, 2025 (Act 1140), as part of the government’s economic revitalisation agenda to curb smuggling and boost Ghana’s foreign reserves.
GOLDBOD is envisioned to serve as the central authority overseeing the purchase, assay, sale, and export of gold from small-scale miners.
By consolidating these functions under one entity, the initiative seeks to streamline operations, curb illegal activities such as gold smuggling, and ensure that gold transactions contribute positively to Ghana’s foreign exchange reserves.
