Financial Analyst & Advisor | Bridging USA & Ghana markets for smart investments ๐บ๐ธ๐ฌ๐ญ | Passionate Chelsea FC supporter and a proud minimalist
1. Bank of Ghana dropped a bombshell into the polarised political atmosphere this week: its delayed 2025 financials.
2. Delayed because by law the audited statement should have been approved by the Board and submitted to the Minister by end-March 2026.
3. The statements was not ready by end-March. They were approved and audited at end-April and published on May 1.
4. Meaning the BoG barely met the second legal deadline: publication by June.
5. Clearly, the BoG wrestled with a lot in the financials. Some even say that the change from Deloitte to KPMG was abrupt. Let's just leave that at gossip.
6. I have many substantive things to say. For now, I will sum them up in the attached infographics and a leave a few short notes here.
7. The ruling NDC really criticised the BoG when it was in opposition for the capital hole of ~$4.3 billion. The current Opposition, which was in government then, now gets to pay them back for the capital hole widening to ~$7.4 billion+. Central Bank independence? Ghanaian politicos have never believed in that theory.
8. Tossing the partisanship aside, there are some grave issues that need better explanation.
9. The BoG's losses and negative equity position (benchmarked against GDP) are some of the worst any central bank anywhere has reported. And for successive years. Unlike Czech Republic, which also reported negative equity for successive years, the BoG's losses include massive quasi-fiscal items.
9. The gold programs are far costlier than they were made to look. Nearly a billion dollars in losses.
10. The BoG would like us to believe that it is "policy-solvent", i.e. its income is enough to cover the costs of its mandate, but it seems to be relying a lot on accounting gymnastics.
11. It announced a surplus of $436 million on the operating income ledger. But that is only because it booked $760m in a one-off gold reserves sale. Without that it would have reported a $323 million operating loss.
12. Likewise, its "other income" jacked up from $31m in 2024 to nearly $170m+ in 2025 because it got reimbursed by the Finance Ministry for IMF SDR allocation costs. The problem is that the SDR allocation cost doesn't tally for 2025. The cost should have been about $35m. So, how does the Ministry refund $170m+?
13. "Other assets" have also seen a big jump because apparently commercial banks took a bunch of dollars from the Gold-for-Reserves program and, as at year end, was yet to settle. Because of that "other assets" jumped from ~$900m to ~$2.1 billion.
14. Meanwhile, the costs associated with the aggressive cedi management (OMO) has hit nearly $7.5bn (OMO liabilities).
15. That said, the BoG has broad national support to stay the course so I don't see the NPP succeeding in reaping a lot of political benefits from attacking it. Unless the cedi starts to slump. And, to be fair, some of this year's losses stem from the Cedi's sharp rally leading to the BoG's dollar assets losing value.
Much to chew on, so more later.
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