Finance and tax analyst Nelson Cudjoe Kuagbedzi has defended the losses recorded by the Bank of Ghana in its 2025 financial accounts, describing them as the inevitable cost of stabilising Ghana’s economy.
Speaking on the central bank’s latest financial statement, which recorded Ghc15.6 billion loss, Mr. Kuagbedzi said the Bank of Ghana is not designed to operate as a profit-making institution but rather to ensure macroeconomic stability.
“Well, if you read Section 3 of the Bank of Ghana Act 2002 (Act 612), the primary objective of the Bank of Ghana is to maintain stability in the general level of prices,” he said.
He explained that the mandate also extends to ensuring currency stability and safeguarding the country’s financial system.
“This presupposes that the central bank does not exist to actually be driven by profit,” Mr. Kuagbedzi noted.
According to him, the Bank’s monetary policy actions in 2025 helped significantly improve economic conditions compared to the previous year.
“If you look at the performance of the economy in 2024 and compare it to 2025, you could only draw one conclusion — that the bank actually used its tools intensively to deliver outcomes that benefit ordinary Ghanaians,” he said.
He pointed to the sharp decline in inflation as evidence of the impact of those policy interventions.
“Bringing down inflation from about 23.8 percent to roughly 5 percent demanded that the Bank of Ghana absorb excess liquidity from the system using its open market operations, and that comes at a cost,” he explained.
Mr. Kuagbedzi added that the central bank’s efforts to strengthen its foreign reserves, including gold purchases, also had implications for its balance sheet.
“Building foreign reserves through gold purchases creates an accounting cost for the balance sheet of the Bank of Ghana,” he said.
He further noted that the strengthening of the Ghana cedi also affects the accounting value of the central bank’s foreign assets.
“A stronger cedi mechanically reduces the cedi value of the dollars and gold the bank holds,” he said.
Despite these developments, Mr. Kuagbedzi insisted that the reported losses should be viewed largely as accounting losses rather than a sign of operational weakness.
“And so the loss that the Bank of Ghana made is actually justifiable, and those losses will not in any way impact the core mandate of the Bank of Ghana,” he stressed.
According to him, the losses could eventually reverse as macroeconomic conditions continue to stabilise.
“I think the loss made by the Bank of Ghana is just an accounting loss that will reverse when the cedi stabilises,” he said.
