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Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, the flagbearer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), has announced his intention to immediately start work after winning the 2024 elections and being sworn in as president. He emphasized that he will not take a honeymoon period during his first hundred days in office.
“I am definitely not taking a honeymoon; we are going to get straight to work to put things in place. The focus is on jobs, and in the first hundred days, we are going to be very hard at work,” he stated during a media engagement in Accra on August 25.
During the same engagement, Dr. Bawumia highlighted the effectiveness of the Gold for Oil programme, asserting that it played a crucial role in saving the economy from collapse. “Without the gold purchase programme and the gold for oil programme, this economy would have collapsed,” he said.
Earlier, the Governor of the Bank of Ghana (BoG), Dr. Ernest Addison, had recommended the continuation of the Gold for Oil programme, describing it as an innovative initiative designed to address economic challenges. However, he noted that the central bank plans to transfer the programme to a commercial bank to better focus on its core responsibilities.
Responding to a question from Buem lawmaker Kofi Adams about whether he would continue to advocate for the programme, despite previously suggesting a gradual phase-out, Dr. Addison explained, “It is a programme that we recommend to continue because it helped us in the period of crisis. We only want to make sure that this is done by a commercial bank so that we can have time to focus on our operations as a central bank.”
He further discussed the importance of the ability to exchange Ghana’s natural resources directly for oil when prices spike, calling it a “very innovative programme” that would help alleviate economic pressures.
Dr. Addison assured the Public Accounts Committee that the central bank expects significant growth in its gold holdings due to the Gold for Reserves programme, which was initiated in 2022.
In July 2021, the BoG launched a Gold Repurchase Programme aimed at doubling its gold holdings over five years. At that launch, Governor Addison noted that while the Bank of Ghana’s foreign reserves had steadily increased to nearly US$11 billion over the past fifteen years, gold reserves remained stagnant at 8.77 tonnes, comprising only 6.14 percent of the Gross International Reserves (GIR).
He also pointed out that compared to Ghana’s static gold holdings, the USA and other industrialized countries in the Eurozone have continued to maintain significant gold reserves since the end of the gold standard era. “According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Gold Council, major industrialized countries held the largest volume of gold reserves as of April 2021, followed by major emerging markets, with major developing countries lagging behind the curve,” he stated.
Dr. Addison highlighted global trends indicating that central banks have demanded gold for various sectors, including jewellery and technology, over the past decade. He noted that Ghana, despite being the largest gold producer in Africa and the seventh-largest globally in 2019, added nothing to its gold reserves during the pandemic, while other central banks significantly increased their holdings.
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