Sammy Gyamfi, CEO of the Ghana Gold Board, has announced a decisive policy shift to end the export of raw gold, marking what he describes as a turning point in Ghana’s mineral value chain.

Speaking on PM Express Business Edition with George Wiafe, he said Ghana has historically failed to maximise value from its gold despite being a major producer.

“Ghana, since we started mining gold, even when we were the Gold Coast till 2024, we have always exported gold in this raw form.

"We’ve had a few refineries in the country, but the refineries have not gotten the needed support from the government to be able to refine a significant portion of the gold that we produce before we export,” he said.

He noted that the absence of strong local refining has long undermined value addition.

“So value addition has been a challenge for many years, but when President Mahama was appointing me, it was one of the matching orders he gave as part of his reset agenda for the sector,” he added.

According to Sammy Gyamfi, the directive from President John Mahama was clear.

“He wanted to see an end and a move away from a dore, what we call raw gold, to bullion or refined gold, so that we can optimise benefits from the entire value chain,” he said.

Sammy Gyamfi stressed that the Gold Board has already begun implementing that vision.

“That is why we as Gold Board, has taken up that task, the President gave us very seriously. And so we are changing that narrative as we speak. We have commenced local value conditions, starting with local refining in Ghana,” he stated.

He revealed that a key milestone has already been achieved through a new refining partnership.

“Not too long ago, we announced the signing of the first-of-its-kind refining agreement with Gold Coast Refinery, and that agreement provides for Gold Board to allocate to the Gold Coast refinery gold up to one kilogram of gold every week, of course, depending on their operational capacity to refine that gold into bullion before,” he said.

The process, he added, has already begun with initial test runs.

“We’ve done the first trial with 200 kg. There were some teething challenges; we took a step back to resolve them, and we are resuming,” he noted.

Sammy Gyamfi said the ambition is to significantly scale up refining capacity.

“We are determined to push harder and harder until we attain that one metric ton of refined gold on a weekly basis,” he said.

He disclosed that government officials have already been directly involved in the rollout.

“So that local refining has already started, the Finance Ministry, together with myself and our board, went to the refinery on the first day that they commenced the local refinery,” he added.

The long-term goal, he said, is to gradually phase out raw exports.

“So once this agreement takes off fully, we will be reducing gradually the quantity of raw gold that we export, and will rather be increasing the quantity of refined gold,” he explained.

Sammy Gyamfi insisted that the shift is already underway, not a future plan.

“The process has already started. This is not a promise. This is not something we are going to do. This is something we are doing.”