GoldBod's 2025 accounts: The Unanswered GH¢4.5477 question — Hon Abena Osei-Asare writes

I have taken a closer look at GoldBod’s 2025 financial statements, and one matter in particular requires a clear public explanation.

Government provided GoldBod with GH¢4.5477 billion. In its own Business Review, GoldBod describes this money as “revolving trade capital” to support gold purchasing, trading and export operations.

Yet the same GH¢4.5477 billion was recognised in the accounts as grant revenue and included in GoldBod’s reported surplus.

Elsewhere in the same report, GoldBod describes the amount as “unutilised government subvention”, while the accounts indicate that the full amount remained at the Bank of Ghana at year-end.

That leaves an obvious accounting question:
How did GH¢4.5477 billion provided as revolving trade capital, and still unutilised at year-end, come to be recognised as revenue contributing to a reported surplus of about GH¢5.44 billion?

This is precisely why the applicable accounting rules matter.

IPSAS 1 requires financial statements to reflect the true substance of transactions and to present a fair and consistent picture of an entity’s financial performance.

Under IPSAS 23, the treatment of Government transfers depends on whether they are unconditional revenue, subject to conditions, or are in substance capital contributions.

The Public Financial Management Act, 2016 (Act 921) also requires public financial statements to be properly prepared, consistently classified and capable of giving a true and fair view.

Sections 79, 82 and 93 are particularly relevant in that regard.

There are further concerns. Different parts of the same annual report give different figures for expenditure, surplus, total assets, net assets and GoldBod’s share of profit in GoldBod Jewellery Limited.

IPSAS 1 requires consistency in financial reporting.

A signed and audited annual report dealing with billions of cedis of public resources should not leave readers choosing between different figures for the same line item.

GoldBod may well have generated income from its operations. That still leaves unanswered the treatment of GH¢4.5477 billion of Government money described by GoldBod itself as both revolving trade capital and unutilised subvention.

I am therefore asking the Directors of GoldBod to explain the accounting basis for that treatment and to reconcile the inconsistent figures appearing in the annual report.

I also call on the Auditor-General to make available the Management Letter arising from the audit, so Ghanaians can know whether these matters were identified and what explanations were provided.

If there is a proper accounting basis for this treatment, it should be stated plainly.

Public money of this magnitude should not be described as revolving capital in one part of the accounts, unutilised in another, and revenue in another without a clear reconciliation.