As the Ghana Gold Board (GOLDBOD) moves towards a system that gives it the ability to trace every significant quantity of gold it buys, mining sector analysts and commodity economists are increasingly worried that this could fundamentally change the economics of artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) because of rising suspicions that a substantial proportion of the gold purchased and traded in by GoldBod may become ineligible because it would be traced back to illegal mining.
GoldBod’s traceability programme is intended to ensure that Ghana’s rapidly expanding official gold-export pipeline does not become a channel through which illegally mined gold is legitimised. GoldBod’s responsible-sourcing policy commits the institution to international standards including the OECD Due Diligence Guidance and the London Bullion Market Association’s responsible-gold principles.
This has become particularly important because ASM has become central to Ghana’s external finances. GoldBod purchased, aggregated and exported about 104 tonnes of ASM gold in 2025, generating nearly US$11 billion in foreign-exchange earnings. In the first half of 2026 alone, its ASM purchases reached approximately 50–54 tonnes, putting the sector on course to equal or exceed its 2025 record.
However, GoldBod’s critics – and a lot of gold mining industry analysts – are now pointing out that the formalization of ASM has not kept pace with its economic importance. Research has historically estimated that 70–80 percent of Ghana’s small-scale mining operations were unlicensed, while academic literature has put the informal share even higher. While that does not, however, mean that 70–80 percent of GoldBod’s purchases are currently illegal, it does create the possibility that a significant proportion is.
GoldBod says it sources through licensed aggregators rather than directly from miners, creating a significant screening layer between the mine and the Board. However it has not yet put a process in place that confirms the claims of aggregators that they indeed purchased the gold they offer the Board from legitimate, licensed, small scale mines.
At present, a licensed aggregator can only provide GoldBod with documentation showing that the immediate supplier is legitimate. A fully developed traceability system should go considerably further: identifying the originating mine, confirming its licence, recording production and transaction information, and creating a digital chain of custody through aggregation, assaying, refining and export. GoldBod has initiated the implementation of a technology-driven system capable of tracing gold through the entire supply chain, and indeed an April 2026 report indicated that the system was being advanced to cover gold from extraction to export.
The development process is therefore already well beyond the conceptual stage. GoldBod announced in January that it would begin by engaging about 600 ASM mines in a pilot traceability programme. It subsequently moved towards procurement of technical services for the design, development, implementation and support of a Traceability and Assurance System.
The most reasonable expectation, therefore, is that a pilot or initial operational phase will emerge during the second half of 2026, with broader nationwide implementation towards the end of 2026 or into early 2027. The exact date of implementation is a target rather than a firm launch date, since the system requires mine registration, technology deployment, data verification and integration with the trading chain.
The more difficult question is what happens when traceability actually begins excluding gold that cannot be linked to licensed production.
An informed estimate by industry experts is that 20–30 percent of GoldBod’s present ASM purchases could ultimately be exposed to exclusion or require additional verification, with a 40 percent reduction representing a severe but plausible worst-case stress scenario during the early stages.
This is deliberately below the 70–80 percent estimate for unlicensed mining because GoldBod already operates through licensed aggregators and because some unlicensed miners’ output may currently enter the formal chain through licensed intermediaries.
Using the first-half 2026 purchase rate of roughly 54 tonnes, annualized purchases would be about 108 tonnes. At the 2025 realized average of approximately US$105.8 million per tonne, 30 percent exclusion would represent about 32.4 tonnes of gold and roughly US$3.43 billion in annual export value. A 40 percent worst-case exclusion would mean approximately 43.2 tonnes and US$4.57 billion of gold no longer entering GoldBod’s formal purchase/export pipeline.
That would be a major macroeconomic shock.
Ghana’s gross international reserves stood at about US$12.94 billion at June 2026, down from US$14.16 billion in March. Gold exports had meanwhile reached US$12.5 billion by June, demonstrating just how important the metal has become to the country’s external position. A US$4.57 billion reduction in annual gold exports would therefore be equivalent to roughly 35 percent of the June reserve stock. It would not automatically reduce reserves by US$4.57 billion—export receipts are also used to finance imports, debt service and other external payments—but it would substantially reduce the pool of foreign exchange from which reserves can be accumulated.
The effect on the cedi would be equally important. Ghana’s recent currency stability has depended heavily on improved dollar supply from exports, particularly gold. A sudden disappearance of even US$3–4 billion of annual gold-related FX inflows would increase the structural shortage of dollars in the domestic market. The result would likely be greater pressure on the Bank of Ghana to supply foreign exchange, slower reserve accumulation and greater vulnerability of the cedi whenever oil-import or corporate dollar demand rises. Recent experience already shows how unmet dollar demand can pressure the currency.
There is, however, an important qualification. Traceability should not be judged a failure if it initially reduces GoldBod’s purchases. If excluded miners are subsequently licensed and brought into the formal system, the apparent short-term loss becomes the foundation for a larger and more sustainable legal gold supply. Indeed, GoldBod’s stated objective is to formalize the sector while reducing smuggling and improving responsible sourcing.
The policy challenge, therefore, is sequencing. If traceability is introduced as an enforcement mechanism without simultaneously making licensing faster, cheaper and more accessible, Ghana could unintentionally push a sizeable volume of gold back into the informal market—and lose the very foreign exchange it has spent the past one and a half years trying to capture.
GoldBod’s task is consequently not merely to trace gold and reject illegal production. It is to use traceability as the bridge by which currently informal producers are identified, regularized and incorporated into the official supply chain. That is the difference between a traceability system that temporarily shrinks Ghana’s gold exports and one that ultimately makes the country’s ASM gold industry cleaner, larger and a more dependable source of foreign exchange.
By: Toma Imirhe / businesspostonline
