The Bank of Ghana (BoG) has announced the termination of its Gold for Oil (G4O) initiative after incurring cumulative losses of GH¢2.137 billion since the programme’s launch in January 2023.
The central bank recorded a GH¢317 million loss in 2023 and a staggering GH¢1.82 billion in 2024.
According to the BoG, it committed approximately GH¢4.69 billion to the initiative, effectively losing 45% of its investment.
The programme was officially discontinued on March 13, 2025, with the central bank citing the scale of financial losses as the primary reason for its closure.
Launched in December 2022, the G4O initiative aimed to address Ghana’s escalating fuel prices and foreign exchange crisis.
In November 2022, diesel prices had spiked to GH¢23 per litre and petrol to around GH¢17 per litre at GOIL service stations.
Faced with a rapidly depreciating cedi and depleting foreign reserves, the government and the BoG sought an alternative solution—using gold instead of U.S. dollars to purchase fuel on the international market.
The goal was to reduce the country’s monthly dollar demand—then around $400 million for fuel imports—and relieve pressure on the cedi by conserving foreign exchange reserves.
The G4O initiative built on the BoG’s earlier domestic gold purchase programme, which began in June 2021.
Partnering with the Precious Minerals Marketing Company (PMMC), now operating as GoldBOD, the central bank acquired gold dore from local miners in cedis, refined it abroad, and added it to the nation’s official reserves.
Originally, the target was to double Ghana’s gold reserves within five years. At the time, reserves stood at 8.74 tonnes.
By 2025, the BoG reported that reserves had grown to over 32 tonnes—nearly a fourfold increase in less than four years.
Despite this success in reserve accumulation, the oil component of the G4O programme proved unsustainable.
“The scale of the losses made continuation of the programme financially untenable,” a BoG official stated following the programme’s shutdown.
While the Gold for Oil initiative significantly expanded Ghana’s gold reserves, it leaves behind a mixed legacy—marked by heavy financial losses in an ambitious attempt to stabilise fuel prices and protect the cedi.
