Bank of Ghana’s 2025 Financial Results: The Cost of Restoring Stability
The Bank of Ghana’s GH¢15.6 billion loss for 2025 is best understood not as a failure of central banking but as the financial cost of restoring price stability, rebuilding confidence and pulling the economy back from the instability that defined the preceding years. The central bank’s audited financial statements show a loss of GH¢15.63 billion for the year ended December 31, 2025, compared with GH¢9.49 billion in 2024. At the group level, negative equity deepened to GH¢93.82 billion from GH¢58.62 billion a year earlier.
But the headline numbers, stripped of context, obscure the more important macroeconomic story: the Bank paid heavily to bring inflation under control, stabilise the cedi, rebuild reserves and restore conditions under which businesses could plan again. It is important to first note that the Bank of Ghana’s primary mandate, under Section 3 of the Bank of Ghana Act, 2002, Act 612, as amended, is not to maximise profit but to maintain stability in the general level of prices. The Act also requires the Bank to support the broader economic policy of the government, promote financial stability, and help ensure an effective banking and credit system.
In policy terms, that mandate is expressed through the medium-term inflation target of 8 percent, plus or minus 2 percentage points. On that score, the Bank’s 2025 accounts must be read against the economic outcome they helped to produce. Inflation, which had remained stubbornly high at 23.8 percent in 2024, fell to 5.4 percent by the end of 2025 and further to 3.2 percent in March 2026, according to Ghana Statistical Services, Bank of Ghana policy documents and briefing material. That placed inflation below the Bank’s medium-term target band and provided the basis for lower interest rates, improved confidence and a reopening of credit channels to the private sector.
The cost of achieving that outcome was significant. The Bank spent GH¢16.73 billion on open market operations in 2025, almost double the GH¢8.60 billion recorded in 2024. These operations represent interest expenses on Bank of Ghana bills and repurchase agreements used to absorb excess liquidity from the financial system a monetary policy tool aimed at reducing inflation.
In simple terms, the central bank took the inflation burden onto its own books so that households and businesses would not continue to pay for it through runaway prices, exchange-rate instability and unaffordable credit. This shows that the Bank of Ghana is committed to fighting inflation at all cost.
The private sector appears to accept the broad logic of that trade-off. Ghana’s manufacturers and import-dependent firms have offered a blunt verdict on the recent macro stabilisation drive: it was unavoidable. Seth Twum Akwaboah, Chief Executive of the Association of Ghana Industries, said the strengthening and relative stability of the cedi was a necessary, even if costly, reset for an economy that had been rattled by uncertainty and collapsing confidence.
“We were in crisis, the confidence level was so low, people investing their own resources became an issue. There was so much uncertainty in the system that it required that level of stability,” Mr Akwaboah said on Channel One TV’s Quarterly Economic Outlook programme.
His comments capture the emerging mood among businesses that the recovery narrative is only credible if the currency anchor holds. For the business community and manufacturers in particular, importers and firms with dollar-denominated input costs, cedi stability is not a technocratic achievement. It is the precondition for planning, pricing, stocking raw materials, negotiating credit and committing capital.
That is the contrast with 2024. Inflation was still above 23 percent. Lending rates were above 30 percent. For a small business taking a GH¢100,000 loan, annual interest costs could exceed GH¢30,000, before wages, rent, utilities, taxes and raw materials were even considered. Businesses were surviving rather than expanding.
The improvement in 2025 and early 2026 has changed that equation. Policy rates have fallen sharply, commercial lending rates have eased, and real private-sector credit has returned to positive growth.
Bank of Ghana data show real private-sector credit growth of 15.3 percent in February 2026, while policy briefings indicate lending conditions have improved materially as disinflation gained traction.
This is the central trade-off in the Bank’s 2025 accounts. The loss is visible on the central bank’s income statement. The gain is visible in lower inflation, cheaper credit, stronger reserves, a more stable currency and a private sector beginning to breathe again.
But is important to note that Ghana is not an outlier in this regard. Central banks that fight inflation often record large accounting losses because the instruments used to absorb liquidity, stabilise markets and defend monetary credibility carry costs. The European Central Bank reported a loss of €7.9 billion for 2024, with the loss to be offset against future profits. The Swiss National Bank posted a record loss of CHF132 billion in 2022, partly reflecting the impact of market movements and currency effects on its balance sheet.
The lesson is that central bank losses do not automatically mean policy failure. In many cases, they reflect the cost of policy success. A central bank is not a commercial bank. It is not judged primarily by dividend payments, return on equity or short-term profitability. It is judged by whether it can preserve price stability, maintain confidence in the currency and support financial stability.
The Bank of Ghana makes precisely that distinction in its 2025 report. It says it remains a going concern and policy solvent despite the accounting loss and negative equity. Policy solvency, as defined in the accounts, is the ability of the central bank to pay for all its monetary policy operations using only the income it generates itself, without needing monetary financing or special government support.
On that measure, the Bank recorded income from operations of GH¢22.23 billion against open market operation costs of GH¢16.73 billion, leaving a positive policy-solvency balance of GH¢5.50 billion in 2025, compared with GH¢793.5 million in 2024.
The Bank’s balance sheet was also affected by the cedi’s strong appreciation. The cedi gained about 41 percent against the dollar in 2025, one of the strongest performances among emerging-market currencies. That was good news for importers, consumers and businesses that pay for raw materials, fuel, machinery and intermediate goods in dollars. But it created a paper loss for the central bank because foreign-currency assets, when translated back into cedis, became worth fewer cedis.
That is an accounting effect, not a disappearance of the underlying dollars. The foreign assets remain. The cedi value changes because the domestic currency strengthened. In other words, the same strong cedi that reduced import costs and helped soften inflation also created revaluation losses in the Bank’s accounts.
Foreign reserves tell the other side of the story. Ghana’s gross international reserves rose from US$9.1 billion at the end of 2024 to US$13.8 billion by the end of 2025, before increasing further to US$14.5 billion by February 2026, according to Bank of Ghana monetary policy data. The build-up in reserves strengthened external buffers and helped sustain relative stability in the foreign exchange market.
That reserve position is central to assessing the Domestic Gold Purchase Programme. Critics have focused on accounting losses and transaction costs. But if the programme were fundamentally weakening the Bank’s external position, the reserve numbers would be falling, not rising.
Instead, the Bank’s financial statements say the domestic gold programme has contributed meaningfully to the stabilisation of the foreign exchange market by strengthening reserve buffers, reducing pressure on foreign-currency demand and improving confidence in the external position.
The accounts also show a GH¢9.57 billion net gain from the sale of refined gold in 2025. The Bank sold 869,915.18 ounces of gold, generating about US$3.6 billion, with the proceeds over the carrying amount recognised as a gain in profit or loss. That helped offset some of the pressures from gold-related operations and supported reserve diversification.
To be clear, the Bank’s financial position is not without risk. Negative equity remains substantial. The accounts state that the position was caused by the Domestic Debt Exchange Programme’s impact on the Bank’s securities portfolio and by the cost of monetary policy operations in 2024 and 2025. The government has acknowledged its obligation to recapitalise the Bank, with a phased programme expected over 2026 to 2032 to restore equity to a level consistent with the Bank’s mandate and risk profile.
But the more immediate policy question is whether Ghana would prefer the 2024 economy to the 2025 adjustment. In 2024, the cedi was under pressure, inflation remained punishingly high, imports were expensive, fuel and raw material costs were rising, and confidence had been badly weakened. In 2025, the cedi strengthened, inflation fell into single digits, reserves reached record levels, and credit conditions began to improve.
The Bank of Ghana’s GH¢15.6 billion loss is therefore not an isolated accounting event. It is the cost of a macroeconomic reset. The issue for policymakers is to ensure that the gains are protected: inflation must remain anchored, the cedi must avoid renewed instability, the government must honour the recapitalisation path, and the Bank must continue to improve the transparency and efficiency of its gold and liquidity operations.
