The CEO of the Ghana Association of Banks, John Awuah, says the effective implementation of the new Ghana GoldBod has the potential to help stabilise the local currency.

Speaking on Joy News’ PM Express Business Edition on last Thursday, he said Ghana is losing billions of dollars in unaccounted gold exports every year.

He believes plugging those leaks through a disciplined and transparent GoldBod regime could be a game-changer for the Cedi.

“There are things that are happening now, which, in my view, if we continue to forcefully implement what we say we are going to do, will help us to better manage the currency,” he said.

He cited a shocking example from recent years.

“We were in this country when Dubai said they had imported $6 billion worth of gold from Ghana. But we had in our books, exported $2 billion. So that $4 billion difference, where was it?”

Mr. Awuah said foreign nationals often buy gold directly from mining communities, bypassing official channels.

Even with licensed small-scale miners, oversight is weak.

“How they get this gold outside of the country, nobody knows,” he said. “How can we have an export of $2 billion and the country we exported to say we imported $6 billion?”

He stressed that the missing $4 billion should have come in as export proceeds. That money could have helped strengthen the cedi.

“If we have a grip on it—what the GoldBod says they will do—if we have a grip and we do not make it like one of the other state institutions that sometimes you don’t know what happens and then things mess up… that’s potentially a lot,” he said.

“Hundreds of millions of dollars that hitherto would have left this country.”

Mr. Awuah said some transactions happen offshore.

“People manage to get Cedis in Ghana, but the dollars never arrive. Then they go back to the fold of our cities, buy our gold, they export, and about 10 to 15% of the proceeds come back just to help them do a few things. And the rest? We lose complete control over.”

He warned that without strong systems, the GoldBod will fail to deliver results. “It’s a big if,” he said.

“If we run this transparently, professionally, and we can aggregate this gold purchase program from the small-scale miners… as a country, we buy in Cedis and we sell… foreign currency comes to the country.”

For Mr. Awuah, that’s the real promise of the GoldBod. But only if it’s done right.