MP Tells IMF Ghana’s BoG Losses Reflect Stabilisation After 2024 Fiscal Slippages
Hon. Dr Othniel Ekow Kwainoe, Member of Parliament for Ekumfi Constituency, has written to the International Monetary Fund pushing back against a petition submitted by former Finance Minister Dr Mohammed Amin Adam on the Bank of Ghana’s 2025 audited financial statements, arguing that the central bank’s reported losses must be understood as the cost of restoring macroeconomic stability after fiscal slippages in 2024.
In a strongly worded response addressed to the IMF Mission Chief for Ghana’s Extended Credit Facility Programme, Dr Kwainoe accused Dr Amin Adam of presenting what he described as a selective account of the Bank of Ghana’s financial position while omitting the fiscal conditions that forced the central bank to tighten liquidity aggressively in 2025.
According to Dr Kwainoe, Ghana entered 2025 with a fiscal deviation of 3.1 per cent of GDP, amounting to more than GH¢36 billion in overspending. He argued that the deviation created excess liquidity in the banking system, sustained inflationary pressures and compelled the Bank of Ghana to deploy open market operations to stabilise the economy.
“The 2025 BoG ‘loss’ was the direct cost of cleaning up Dr Amin’s fiscal slippages,” he stated, adding that the costs associated with the central bank’s sterilisation measures were “not evidence of mismanagement, but the unavoidable price of reversing the damage created in 2024.”
The response comes amid renewed political debate over the Bank of Ghana’s 2025 financial statements, particularly the implications of its reported losses, negative equity position, open market operation costs and foreign exchange revaluation charge.
Dr Kwainoe said the debate must be placed within the broader macroeconomic outcomes recorded in 2025 and early 2026. He cited a sharp reduction in reserve money growth from 104.5 per cent to 2.6 per cent, a fall in inflation from 23.8 per cent to 5.4 per cent, and a further decline to 3.2 per cent by March 2026.
He also pointed to a 40 per cent appreciation of the cedi, import-cost savings exceeding GH¢60 billion, government foreign-exchange-linked savings above GH¢12 billion, a fall in public debt from 61.8 per cent to 45.3 per cent of GDP, and gross reserves rising to $13.8 billion, which he described as the highest in Ghana’s history.
“These are not political claims. These are the Bank’s own numbers,” he said.
The Ekumfi MP also rejected the suggestion that the Bank of Ghana’s negative equity position should be interpreted as insolvency. He argued that central banks in advanced economies, including the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and the Bank of England, had recorded negative equity positions during monetary tightening cycles without becoming insolvent or losing operational credibility.
“Negative equity in a central bank is not a liquidity problem. It is not a solvency problem. It is the accounting footprint of decisive monetary policy,” he wrote.
Dr Kwainoe further dismissed concerns over the GH¢29.1 billion foreign exchange revaluation charge, insisting that it was not a cash loss. He said no reserves were lost and no cash left the central bank, explaining that the charge reflected the accounting impact of the cedi’s appreciation.
He noted that the same accounting treatment produced a GH¢12.7 billion revaluation gain in 2024 when the cedi weakened, arguing that it was inconsistent to accept the gain in one year and condemn the loss in another.
On the Domestic Gold Purchase Programme, Dr Kwainoe said the initiative strengthened Ghana’s reserve position and contributed significantly to the cedi’s recovery. He stated that the programme helped increase reserves from $9.1 billion to $13.8 billion and expanded Ghana’s gold holdings to 111 tonnes.
He therefore rejected attempts to frame the gold programme as a fiscal risk, describing it instead as a strategic intervention that supported currency stability and reserve accumulation.
According to him, the real fiscal risk was not the Bank of Ghana’s 2025 stabilisation effort, but the 2024 overspending that forced the central bank to act.
“It is important that the IMF does not lose sight of this sequence: fiscal indiscipline, excess liquidity, inflation, aggressive sterilisation, accounting loss,” he wrote. “The cause was fiscal. The cure was monetary. The cost was unavoidable.”
Dr Kwainoe also described calls for recapitalisation of the Bank of Ghana as premature, insisting that central bank recapitalisation is a medium-term exercise and not an emergency.
He said the Bank of Ghana remains “fully functional, fully liquid, and fully capable of executing monetary policy,” and accused Dr Amin Adam of raising alarm for political rather than technical reasons.
The letter urged the IMF to treat the Bank of Ghana’s 2025 financial statements not as a warning sign, but as evidence of a central bank that acted decisively to correct fiscal excesses and restore stability.
Dr Kwainoe said Ghana’s recovery must not be undermined by what he called “politically motivated reinterpretations of accounting entries,” adding that the durability of the country’s stabilisation path will depend on continued fiscal and monetary discipline.
The intervention is likely to sharpen the political debate around the Bank of Ghana’s financial position, particularly as the government and the central bank continue to defend the cost of disinflation, reserve rebuilding and exchange rate stability.
For the IMF, the exchange between the former Finance Minister and the Ekumfi MP places Ghana’s economic stabilisation story under renewed scrutiny: whether the central bank’s losses represent a balance-sheet danger, or the accounting cost of a policy response that helped restore macroeconomic confidence.
Dr Kwainoe’s position is clear. The 2025 Bank of Ghana numbers, he argues, should not be read in isolation. They should be judged against the inflation decline, reserve build-up, cedi appreciation and debt reduction that followed.
In his view, the central bank paid a cost but that cost delivered stability.
