A bitter political and economic confrontation between the opposition New Patriotic Party and the governing National Democratic Congress has intensified, with Ofoase-Ayirebi MP Kojo Oppong Nkrumah challenging GoldBod Chief Executive Sammy Gyamfi to submit himself to parliamentary scrutiny over controversies surrounding the Bank of Ghana’s 2025 financial statements.
The latest exchange follows weeks of escalating debate over the true extent of the Bank of Ghana’s financial losses after the central bank published its audited 2025 accounts showing an operating loss of GH¢15.63 billion and an additional GH¢19.32 billion loss under Other Comprehensive Income (OCI).
While government officials and the NDC Majority maintain that the Bank’s official operating loss stands at GH¢15.6 billion, the Minority Caucus insists that the broader financial impact reflected in the accounts pushes total losses to GH¢34.9 billion.
The controversy deepened after Sammy Gyamfi, Chief Executive Officer of Ghana Gold Board, accused Mr Oppong Nkrumah of engaging in “voodoo mathematics” by combining the operating loss with OCI figures to arrive at the higher amount.
Speaking on TV3’s Key Points programme, Sammy Gyamfi defended the audited figures prepared by global audit firm KPMG and argued that only the operating loss should be used to assess the Bank’s financial health.
He questioned the credibility of the Minority’s interpretation and insisted that the GH¢15.6 billion figure represented the legitimate operating loss of the central bank.
But in a strongly worded response posted on Facebook, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah exposed Sammy Gyamfi for deliberately attempting to divert public attention from what he described as the Bank’s substantial losses and the NDC government’s failure to uphold promises of financial discipline at the central bank.
“Sammy, I understand your intention to turn this into a contest between us. You want to divert attention from the Bank of Ghana’s substantial loss of GH¢34.9 billion and your party’s broken promise of financial discipline at the Bank of Ghana,” Mr Oppong Nkrumah wrote.
The Ranking Member on Parliament’s Economy and Development Committee insisted that the Bank’s own balance sheet already confirms the broader loss figure because both the operating loss and the OCI losses reduce the Bank’s net equity position.
“The Bank of Ghana itself, on page 16, combines both figures and reduces its net equity by the full GH¢34.9 billion, not GH¢15 billion. The central bank’s own balance sheet has already settled this issue,” he argued.
Mr Oppong Nkrumah further claimed that until 2024, Bank of Ghana accounts were prepared under a framework that incorporated these categories of gains and losses directly into the Profit and Loss account in line with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS).
According to him, changes introduced under the current administration altered the accounting treatment by moving certain losses into OCI rather than the main Profit and Loss account, resulting in KPMG issuing an opinion that the accounts were prepared according to the institution’s own standards rather than IFRS.
“This also means that the performance of the P&L in 2024 and 2025 cannot be compared to the periods prior to 2024 unless and until one combines the P&L and OCI,” he stated.
The former Information Minister also accused Sammy Gyamfi of inconsistency, pointing to earlier public comments made by the GoldBod CEO about the financial position of the Bank of Ghana.
According to Mr Oppong Nkrumah, Sammy Gyamfi had previously dismissed claims about losses at the central bank in January 2024 and accused critics of “dreaming or hallucinating,” only to later acknowledge portions of the losses now contained in the audited accounts.
He further accused the GoldBod CEO of shifting positions regarding the credibility of KPMG, claiming that Sammy Gyamfi had previously criticised a KPMG report in 2018 as “bogus, one-sided, and inconclusive” but was now relying heavily on the firm’s credibility to defend the Bank’s accounts.
A major point of contention in the latest exchange concerns allegations by the Minority that parliamentary investigations into gold transaction losses have been obstructed since March 2026.
Mr Oppong Nkrumah alleged that Majority MPs have repeatedly blocked attempts to probe billions of cedis in losses associated with gold-related transactions and challenged Sammy Gyamfi to support a formal parliamentary inquiry if he is confident in his position.
“You claim to welcome a probe, yet you have been evading a Parliamentary investigation into the Gold losses of billions of cedis since March 27th,” he wrote.
“Your lies will be exposed if you are brave enough to appear under oath in a Parliamentary Inquiry where documents will be presented and scrutinized.”
The Ofoase-Ayirebi MP also argued that the controversy surrounding the Bank of Ghana’s 2025 financial statements should properly be addressed by Finance Minister Cassiel Ato Forson rather than by the GoldBod CEO or party communicators.
“The Bank of Ghana’s 2025 accounts are not the responsibility of GoldBod’s CEO or the NDC’s National Communications Officer. They belong to the Minister for Finance, who must present them to Parliament,” he stated.
He subsequently challenged Sammy Gyamfi to stop engaging through social media and instead submit himself to parliamentary scrutiny under oath.
“If you are as confident of your case as your posts suggest, be the loudest voice in your party today demanding that the inquiry I initiated on March 27th be allowed to proceed,” he added.
In response, Sammy Gyamfi accused the Minority MP of attempting to shift the goalposts after initially describing the GH¢34.9 billion figure as the “true operating loss” during an earlier Minority press conference.
The GoldBod CEO argued that Mr Oppong Nkrumah was now changing his language from “operating loss” to “total loss” after his analysis had allegedly been challenged publicly.
Sammy Gyamfi insisted that the audited Profit and Loss statement remains the proper basis for assessing the financial health of the Bank and maintained that unrealised valuation adjustments captured under OCI should not be treated the same way as operating losses.
The growing dispute has now become one of the most politically charged economic debates in Ghana, with both the Minority and Majority presenting sharply different interpretations of the Bank of Ghana’s financial condition and the sustainability of the government’s economic management strategy.
