The Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod), Sammy Gyamfi, has rejected claims that the state gold-purchasing agency sources the bulk of its gold from illegal small-scale miners, describing such assertions as false and misleading.
Speaking during a live intervention on TV3’s Key Points programme, Gyamfi responded to comments attributed to private legal practitioner Kofi Bentil, who had suggested that about 85 per cent of small-scale miners in Ghana are engaged in illegal mining, known locally as galamsey, and by inference that GoldBod purchases most of its gold from such sources.
Gyamfi said the claim had no factual or legal basis and should not be allowed to stand unchallenged on a public platform. He stressed that GoldBod is a statutory body established under Act 1140, passed by Parliament in 2025, and is legally mandated to buy gold only from licensed miners.
“For the record, GoldBod is a creature of law,” Gyamfi said. “The law is very clear on how and where we buy gold. We do not buy gold from illegal miners.”
He explained that GoldBod’s purchases are drawn from two main sources: large-scale mining companies and licensed small-scale miners. According to him, the agency currently buys about 20 per cent of the gold produced by seven large-scale mining firms in Ghana to shore up the country’s gold reserves.
On small-scale mining, Gyamfi said GoldBod is required by law to purchase gold exclusively from licensed operators, numbering more than 2,000 nationwide. These transactions, he noted, are conducted through recognised associations, including the Ghana National Association of Small Scale Miners and the Concerned Small Scale Miners Association.
Gyamfi described the GoldBod framework as unprecedented, arguing that Ghana had never before established a comprehensive legal and institutional system to ensure that state gold purchases were restricted to licensed sources. He contrasted the current regime with earlier gold-purchasing initiatives, including the gold-for-oil and gold-for-forex programmes introduced in 2022.
He said those earlier programmes, implemented under the previous administration, operated without a dedicated legal framework or traceability system to verify the origins of gold supplied to the state. “We decided, as a government and as a nation, to create a legal and institutional framework that mandates us to buy only from licensed miners,” Gyamfi said.
Addressing concerns raised by programme host Alfred Ocansey about the risk of indirect purchases from illegal miners, Gyamfi acknowledged that GoldBod does not buy gold directly from mining sites. Instead, it relies on more than 700 licensed private buying agents across the country.
He conceded that some of these agents could breach the law by purchasing gold from unlicensed sources, but said this risk was precisely why the government is rolling out a nationwide track-and-trace system.
Under section 31F of the GoldBod Act, Gyamfi said President John Dramani Mahama has directed the establishment of a full gold value-chain traceability system. The initiative, he said, is already under way and is expected to be operational by the first quarter of next year.
The system, once completed, will enable authorities to trace every gram of gold purchased by GoldBod back to its mine of origin, a development Gyamfi described as a historic first since Ghana’s independence.
“No system anywhere in the world is perfect,” he said. “But in less than nine months, we are putting in place a system that will allow us to detect breaches, segregate tainted gold and enforce total compliance.”
Gyamfi also criticised what he described as selective outrage over GoldBod’s operations, arguing that similar scrutiny was not applied to earlier gold-purchasing schemes. He said it was unfair to accuse GoldBod of complicity in illegal mining while ignoring the absence of safeguards under previous programmes.
He urged commentators to avoid making sweeping claims without evidence, particularly on sensitive national issues such as illegal mining, which continues to pose environmental and economic challenges for Ghana.
Gyamfi said his intervention was limited to correcting the record on GoldBod’s sourcing practices, adding that broader discussions on illegal mining were being handled by the Minister for Government Communications, who was present in the studio.
“I came in only to respond to the allegation that GoldBod buys 85 per cent of its gold from galamseyers,” he said. “That claim is not true, and the facts are clear.”