Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, the flagbearer of the New Patriotic Party, has attributed the survival of Ghana’s economy to the innovative Gold-for-Oil programme, stating that without it, the nation’s financial system would have collapsed.
In a media engagement on Sunday, August 25, Dr. Bawumia underscored the importance of this initiative, explaining that it enabled Ghana to use its local gold resources to sustain essential services and stabilize the economy.
He further highlighted the critical role this strategy played in maintaining economic stability.
“The thing about gold for us is that we don’t have to export anything to get gold. If we have cedis, we will buy gold right here locally.
So, we can use our cedis to buy gold without needing to export cocoa, oil, diamond or timber.
We just buy the gold locally. That is what we have that many countries don’t have. So, I then came up with the idea that since we didn’t have forex at the time to pay for oil, let’s use gold.
“Therefore we went into this gold for oil and gold purchase programme for reserves. What is very interesting, frankly, without this Gold-For-Oil and Gold Purchase programme, this economy would have collapsed. There is no doubt in mind,” he said.
The vice president continued: “Why do I say so, in the last couple of years, the Bank of Ghana under the gold purchase programme has been able to buy $5 billion of gold, think about it.
We’ve gone to the IMF to look for $3 billion which is going to be paid over three years, this is what we are going through. But locally, we’ve been able to buy $5 billion.
This is why there are no queues for petrol, this is why dumsor has not happened in Ghana.
Otherwise, where would you have gotten $ 5 billion from your reserves to keep up all the payments you needed to make,” he asked.
