Bank of Ghana Governor Dr Johnson Asiama has defended the Bank of Ghana FX role, dismissing suggestions that the central bank has ceded responsibility for the foreign exchange market to the Ghana Gold Board.
Dr Asiama said the current arrangement, under which GoldBod supplies foreign exchange to commercial banks while the central bank concentrates on building reserves, should not be interpreted as a withdrawal by the BoG from the market.
“We want to focus on reserve build-up while GoldBod supports with FX intermediation as well as some level of intervention for the market,” he said.
The Governor stressed that the central bank remained prepared to enter the market whenever conditions required intervention, particularly where sharp movements threatened orderly trading.
He was speaking to institutional investors, brokers and fund managers at a meeting organised by Standard Bank at the Conrad Hotel in Bangkok, Thailand, on the sidelines of the IMF and World Bank Annual Meetings.
GoldBod Supporting, Not Replacing BoG
Questions over the respective roles of GoldBod and the central bank have grown since the Gold Board expanded foreign exchange sales to commercial banks.
Some market participants have raised concerns about whether GoldBod’s involvement alters the Bank of Ghana’s statutory responsibilities for foreign exchange management.
Dr Asiama rejected that interpretation.
According to him, foreign exchange now being channelled through GoldBod would ordinarily have entered the domestic market through other channels. The revised structure simply allows those flows to be intermediated in a more organised way while supporting market liquidity.
The Governor said GoldBod’s contribution had proved useful under prevailing conditions. “I have been wondering why we had not set up GoldBod long ago,” he said.
Since the beginning of October, GoldBod has sold about US$452 million to commercial banks through its GoFX platform.
The platform conducts sales twice weekly and provides electronic submissions, allocation processing, time stamps, transaction histories and audit trails.
The programme remains under Bank of Ghana regulatory oversight. The central bank has real-time access to the platform, while GoldBod is required to submit transaction reports after each sale.
US$1bn Planned for Commercial Banks
GoldBod is targeting approximately US$1.5 billion in foreign exchange generation during October.
Of that amount, US$1 billion is earmarked for sale to commercial banks, while another US$500 million is expected to be transferred to the Bank of Ghana to support reserve accumulation.
The central bank has indicated that it does not currently expect to run a separate foreign exchange intermediation programme.
That does not rule out intervention.
In a September communication to market participants, the BoG said it remained ready to enter the market where necessary while preserving exchange rate flexibility.
The distinction is important. Routine intermediation can be handled through GoldBod’s platform, but responsibility for responding to excessive volatility remains with the central bank.
Cedi Pressure Described as ‘Marginal Blip’
The clarification comes as the cedi continues to face pressure after a period of relative stability.
The currency’s year-to-date depreciation stands at 10.33%, although conditions have improved marginally over the past two weeks.
Dr Asiama described the recent weakness as a “marginal blip” and told investors he expected the market to normalise.
He attributed part of the pressure to profit-taking and foreign exchange demand from multinational companies and other businesses.
The Governor said reforms already underway should help stabilise conditions, but maintained that the BoG would act if market movements became disorderly.
Reserves Remain Central to Strategy
The other side of the foreign exchange strategy is reserve accumulation.
Ghana’s gross international reserves stood at about US$12.04 billion as of September 22, 2026.
Dr Asiama acknowledged that energy-sector payments had exerted pressure on reserves in recent months but said the central bank remained on course to meet its year-end objectives under the Policy Coordination Instrument.
He expects Ghana to reach the programme target of six months of import cover by December.
The reserve build-up, he said, is intended to give Ghana stronger buffers against less favourable external conditions, including the possibility of a sharp decline in global gold prices.
For investors, the message from Bangkok was therefore twofold: GoldBod will continue supplying foreign exchange to the market, but the Bank of Ghana has not surrendered its stabilisation mandate.
The central bank’s priority is to strengthen reserves while keeping enough room to step back into the market whenever volatility demands it.
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