- Gold Formalisation Drive Yields GH¢970 million in GoldBod Assay Revenue
The Ghana Gold Board generated GH¢970 million in non-tax revenue from gold assay fees in 2025, highlighting the potentially significant fiscal value embedded in Ghana’s effort to formalise its bullion market and retain a larger share of the wealth generated by one of its most important natural resources.
Sammy Gyamfi, Chief Executive of the Ghana Gold Board, said the revenue came from charges for assaying gold purchased or handled by the Bank of Ghana and licensed gold-buying companies. “GoldBod’s non-tax revenue was GH¢970 million in 2025,” he said, adding that it came from “the assay fees GoldBod charges the Bank of Ghana and other licensed gold-buying companies.”
The figure adds a new dimension to the debate over GoldBod, which has largely centred on gold purchases, foreign-exchange mobilisation, traceability and the formalisation of the small-scale mining industry. It suggests that the infrastructure surrounding the trade itself — assaying, certification, aggregation and regulation — can generate substantial revenue for the state.
Assaying is fundamental to the bullion market because it establishes the purity and therefore the value of gold being bought and sold. Bringing more of that process into a regulated framework gives authorities greater visibility over the volume, quality and value of gold moving through the domestic market.
For Ghana, that visibility is economically important. The country has long faced the contradiction of being a major gold producer while periodically struggling with foreign-exchange shortages, pressure on the cedi and comparatively limited domestic value capture from the wider gold trade.
GoldBod’s model seeks to narrow that gap by creating a more centralised system for regulating, purchasing, assaying and exporting gold, particularly from the small-scale mining sector. If more bullion moves through officially supervised channels, government can potentially capture value at several points rather than relying mainly on taxes, royalties and export receipts.
The GH¢970 million therefore raises an important fiscal question: how much revenue has Ghana historically left outside the public system because significant parts of the gold trade were fragmented, informal or weakly monitored?
Mr Gyamfi has presented the assay income as evidence of what better regulation can deliver. For a government seeking to improve domestic revenue mobilisation, the emergence of a sizeable non-tax income stream linked to the gold industry could complement conventional tax receipts.
But the headline figure requires deeper examination. The critical issue is not merely how much GoldBod collected, but how much it cost to generate that revenue and what ultimately accrued to the state after operational expenses.
Gross revenue is not the same as profit or a transfer to the public purse. A complete assessment of GoldBod’s fiscal contribution would therefore require disclosure of assay volumes, fee schedules, operating costs, margins, administrative expenses and the amount eventually transferred to government.
That distinction will become increasingly important as GoldBod expands its role. An institution handling large financial flows in one of Ghana’s most valuable commodity markets will inevitably face greater expectations around transparency, financial reporting and accountability.
There is also a question of whether the revenue model is sustainable. Rising assay income is positive if it reflects increasing volumes of gold passing through formal channels, but less so if revenue growth is driven predominantly by higher fees imposed on market participants.
The cost structure matters because formalisation depends partly on incentives. If licensed traders face charges that make the regulated market materially more expensive than informal alternatives, some participants may seek to circumvent the system, undermining the same traceability and anti-smuggling objectives GoldBod is attempting to achieve.
The strongest model would therefore combine competitive assay fees with sufficiently large formal-market volumes. That would allow GoldBod to generate revenue while making compliance commercially attractive to miners, aggregators and buyers.
Quality is equally important. Traders and international counterparties must have confidence that assay results are consistent, technically credible and capable of independent verification. Trust in purity certification directly affects pricing and the willingness of buyers to transact through Ghana’s official system.
The GH¢970 million figure also illustrates why Ghana’s gold policy increasingly extends beyond mining itself. The economic value of gold is created not only when it is extracted but also through assaying, refining, financing, logistics, trading and certification.
Capturing more of those activities domestically could allow Ghana to retain a greater share of the value chain. This is particularly important as GoldBod simultaneously pushes local refining, formal purchasing and greater oversight of gold exports.
The strategy also intersects with the country’s foreign-exchange objectives. Greater formalisation gives authorities better information about how much gold is produced and exported while potentially increasing the proportion of export proceeds flowing through the official financial system.
If effectively implemented, that could strengthen foreign-exchange availability and reduce leakage from unofficial gold trading. It could also support the wider reserve-accumulation strategy linked to Ghana’s gold resources.
Yet the expanding role of the state in gold trading means the standard of disclosure must rise alongside it. The more GoldBod earns, buys, assays and influences market structure, the stronger the case for regular publication of audited accounts, trading margins, liabilities, fee income and transfers to government.
That transparency would allow the public to determine whether the new model is generating genuine additional value rather than simply moving costs and revenues between state institutions and licensed market participants.
Ultimately, GoldBod will not be judged by assay revenue alone. Its success will depend on whether formalisation reduces illicit trade, whether more foreign exchange enters the official economy, whether local refining expands, whether Ghana secures sustainable net financial returns and whether market participants retain incentives to operate within the regulated system.
The GH¢970 million generated from assay fees is nevertheless significant because it reveals the commercial value embedded in the infrastructure surrounding Ghana’s gold trade.
The larger policy lesson is that producing gold is only one part of creating national wealth from gold. The greater prize lies in capturing value across the entire chain and ensuring that the institutions doing so are transparent, efficient and commercially sustainable.
