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0 The Minority in Parliament is demanding urgent answers from the Ghana Gold Board (Goldbod) over where it is sourcing its gold, amid concerns that the board may be purchasing from unregulated or illegal mining operations, worsening the country’s galamsey crisis.
Chairman of Parliament’s Subsidiary Legislation Committee, Patrick Boamah, said the GoldBod’s activities raise serious concerns about compliance with its own law, especially on transparency and traceability of gold purchases. He questioned whether the Board was following the legal requirement to disclose its sources of gold and make relevant data public.
“If you go to the Gold Board’s website right now, you will not find anything as required by the Act. The GoldBod came into being in April, and we are now at the end of October that is well over a quarter. All this information ought to be there.”
He expressed frustration that while the Gold Board has been seen “appointing brand ambassadors, delivering pickups to institutions and making public donations,” it has failed to meet basic legal obligations under Section 42 of its establishing Act.
“What the law requires them to do hasn’t been complied with, and that is very dangerous. “This is happening at a time when the World Bank, the European Union and other international bodies are watching how Ghana is heading to in the fight against galamsey.”
Mr Boamah questioned the integrity of the Board’s gold sourcing, asking, “Where is the Gold Board getting all that gold from? Is it from responsible mining? Is it from small-scale miners? Or is it from galamsey sites?”
He said these were crucial questions that needed immediate answers to ensure the state was not indirectly fuelling illegal mining.
He also raised concerns about what he described as illegal fees and charges being imposed by the Gold Board, saying Parliament has not yet approved any fees for the institution.
“There are issues that I am going to be chasing the Bank of Ghana and the Gold Board on,” he noted. “Some of these charges are already being looked into by the World Bank and IMF. There are issues with pricing and losses that the GoldBod, the Bank of Ghana, and the Ministry of Finance have to deal with.”
Mr Boamah said he would soon file a parliamentary question for both the Minister of Finance and the Governor of the Bank of Ghana to explain the basis for the Board’s current financial practices.
He also revealed that, in response to a letter he wrote to the GoldBod, the institution confirmed that, since its establishment, it has licensed only one company as a sole aggregator, 21 self-financing aggregators, 204 tier-one buyers, and 420 tier-two buyers.
“GoldBod is not even a year old, so what due diligence process did they undertake to enable them license this number of companies?”
Meanwhile, Patrick Boamah is demanding answers on how the Gold Board is being funded, saying a letter from the Ministry of Finance confirmed that no allocations have been made to the GoldBod.
“The Ministry has not received, transferred, or made any allocation to the Gold Board,” Mr Boamah said, citing the letter signed by the Ministry’s Chief Director.
“So now the question is, how is the GoldBod being funded? Is it from the Central Bank? Is the Bank of Ghana printing money to fund the GoldBod? Why must the Bank of Ghana be doing that?”
