GoldBod’s GH¢970mn assay windfall opens new fiscal channel from Ghana’s gold trade

Ghana’s push to capture more value from its gold industry is beginning to produce a potentially important new stream of government income, after the Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod) generated GH¢970mn in non-tax revenue from assay fees in 2025.

Sammy Gyamfi, chief executive of GoldBod, said the revenue was earned from charges imposed for testing and certifying gold traded by institutions including the Bank of Ghana and licensed gold-buying companies.

“GoldBod’s non-tax revenue was GH¢970 million in 2025,” Mr Gyamfi said.

He added that the money came from “the assay fees GoldBod charges the Bank of Ghana and other licensed gold-buying companies.”

The figure is significant not simply because of its size, but because it illustrates how Ghana could extract greater fiscal value from the infrastructure surrounding its mineral industry rather than relying overwhelmingly on conventional taxes, royalties and dividends from mining companies.

Gold has long occupied a central position in Ghana’s economy. But the policy challenge has increasingly shifted from simply expanding production towards ensuring that a greater proportion of the value generated across the gold supply chain remains within the domestic economy.

GoldBod’s GH¢970mn revenue suggests regulation itself — when attached to commercially valuable services such as assaying — can become part of that value-capture strategy.

Assaying is a critical component of the gold market because it determines the purity, weight and characteristics of bullion, providing the basis on which its commercial value can be established. Reliable certification is particularly important in a market where discrepancies in purity can translate into substantial financial losses.

By positioning GoldBod within that transaction infrastructure, the government is effectively attempting to formalise a segment of the gold economy that has historically been vulnerable to opacity, under-declaration, smuggling and fragmented regulatory oversight.

From regulator to revenue generator

The emergence of assay fees as a significant non-tax revenue source could have broader implications for Ghana’s public finances.

Successive governments have struggled to increase domestic revenue sufficiently to finance expenditure without excessive reliance on borrowing. Ghana’s recent fiscal difficulties have intensified the search for alternative revenue sources that do not necessarily require higher headline tax rates.

In that context, almost GH¢1bn generated through a specialised service in a single commodity sector is noteworthy.

Unlike conventional taxation, non-tax revenues can be tied directly to economic services provided by public institutions. If efficiently administered, they can broaden the government’s revenue base while reducing pressure to repeatedly increase taxes on households and formal businesses.

But the sustainability of such revenue will depend on transaction volumes, the structure of assay charges and, crucially, the extent to which Ghana succeeds in bringing more gold trading into regulated channels.

The greater the volume of gold that passes through the formal system, the larger the potential revenue base for assaying and related services.

That creates a potentially useful alignment between GoldBod’s regulatory and commercial objectives: formalisation strengthens oversight while simultaneously expanding the pool of transactions from which the state can derive income.

The bigger prize is foreign exchange

The GH¢970mn figure, however, represents only one part of the government’s broader ambitions for GoldBod.

Mr Gyamfi said the institution’s operations are also intended to formalise domestic gold trading, strengthen foreign exchange mobilisation and support the accumulation of Ghana’s gold reserves.

These objectives could ultimately carry greater macroeconomic significance than assay revenues themselves.

Gold is Ghana’s largest merchandise export and therefore one of the country’s most important sources of foreign currency. Ensuring that export proceeds are properly captured through formal financial channels can strengthen foreign exchange liquidity and potentially improve the Bank of Ghana’s ability to build reserves and manage periods of pressure on the cedi.

The government’s strategy therefore appears to treat gold not merely as an export commodity but increasingly as a monetary and balance-of-payments asset.

This is particularly important for an economy that has repeatedly faced periods of foreign exchange scarcity, sharp currency depreciation and declining international reserves.

A better-regulated domestic gold market could allow authorities to improve visibility over production and trading flows while reducing leakages from illicit exports.

Capturing more of the gold value chain

There is also a deeper structural argument behind GoldBod’s expanding role.

For decades, one of the central criticisms of commodity-dependent African economies has been that they export valuable natural resources while retaining relatively limited portions of the wider economic value generated by those resources.

Ghana may be one of Africa’s largest gold producers, but significant value can still be captured outside the country through trading, financing, refining and other downstream activities.

Mr Gyamfi said GoldBod’s reforms are intended to change that equation by ensuring Ghana retains a greater proportion of the economic benefits generated by its mineral wealth.

The GH¢970mn assay revenue offers an early illustration of what that approach could mean in practice: extracting revenue not only when gold is mined or exported, but also from services and infrastructure surrounding its movement through the market.

The challenge will be ensuring that GoldBod’s growing commercial footprint is accompanied by strong governance, transparent accounting and competitive fee structures.

If assay charges become excessively expensive, they could create incentives for operators to avoid formal channels. If governance is weak, meanwhile, greater state involvement in gold trading could introduce new fiscal and operational risks.

The policy balance will therefore be delicate.

But if GoldBod can maintain commercial discipline while expanding formalisation, the implications could extend well beyond the GH¢970mn already collected.

For Ghana, the bigger opportunity lies in transforming its gold wealth from a largely extractive export business into a broader domestic financial ecosystem — one capable of generating fiscal revenues, accumulating reserves, strengthening foreign exchange liquidity and retaining more value within the economy.

In that sense, the assay fees may be less important as an endpoint than as evidence of what a more formalised gold market could eventually deliver.