Renowned economist and MTN Ghana Board Chairman, Dr Ishmael Yamson, has thrown his weight behind the government’s ambitious Gold for Reserves programme.
He argues that aggressively stockpiling gold is exactly the kind of structural buffer required to permanently lock in Ghana’s recent macroeconomic gains and break a vicious cycle of fleeting economic success.
Speaking candidly on the country's turbulent financial history, the corporate titan admitted that convincing the international community that Ghana's current turnaround is permanent remains a tough sell. Investors have watched local markets boom and bust too many times to simply trust a few quarters of good data.
“They’ve seen the history. They know what it is. We go up, we come down," Dr Yamson observed. "We take three years to build, and we take another five years to destroy.”
Despite this bleak historical pattern, the seasoned economist senses a genuine shift in the current economic trajectory. He praised the current administration for engineering a rapid stabilization over the past 18 months, describing the recovery as both dramatic and worthy of high commendation.
While he acknowledged that the ongoing IMF bailout and painful debt restructuring exercises laid the immediate groundwork for this stability, Dr Yamson insisted that temporary fiscal life jackets will not keep the country afloat forever. The real challenge is surviving the long haul.
“You won’t get sustainability unless you build resilience,” he warned, pointing out that successive political administrations routinely prioritize quick fixes to calm the markets but walk away before erecting the permanent pillars needed to support enduring growth.
A Necessary Risk for Lasting Stability
Dr Yamson identified the central bank's Gold for Reserves programme as a foundational pillar capable of absorbing future external shocks.
Critics have heavily scrutinized the bullion scheme, but the MTN board chairman believes the potential payoff far outweighs the operational hazards.
“I know that everybody is saying this is ambitious, but the Gold for Reserves program, it has its risks.
"There’s no doubt about that. We can go through the risks and talk about the risks." - Dr Yamson
He maintained that if financial authorities can successfully hit their target of securing 15 months of import cover by 2028, the country will finally possess the deep financial reserves required to sustain the macroeconomic stability currently being experienced.
Tackling Food Inflation with Mega Plantations
Beyond gold, Dr Yamson challenged policymakers to rethink their approach to agriculture, a sector that consistently drives up the national inflation basket.
He did not mince words regarding previous state interventions, questioning why massive capital injections into initiatives like Planting for Food and Jobs failed to tame soaring market prices.
According to him, the fundamental solution lies in massive commercial scale plantation farming. He argued that if the government aggressively pushes forward with proposed plans to cultivate 250,000 hectares of oil palm and dedicates a substantial portion strictly to mechanized food production, the country would finally resolve its food security crisis on a permanent basis.
For Dr Yamson, the ultimate goal is signaling to serious global capital that Ghana is open for decades of uninterrupted business.
“No investor comes to any country to invest money unless it is a briefcase investor who comes here, makes a quick buck, and runs away," he explained.
A serious industrialist looking to build a factory and hire thousands is planning for a thirty to forty year horizon.
He concluded that until state leaders can definitively demonstrate a minimum of ten years of absolute economic stability, the nation will struggle to attract the heavy transformative capital it desperately needs.
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