Ask for explanation: QMS checked every number in Bawumia's Tokyo answer on gold, the $1.7bn loss, MoMo and ECG

Former Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, the NPP's 2024 presidential candidate, defended his economic record at a town hall in Tokyo, Japan, reported on 5 November 2026 by JoyNews, Citi Newsroom, MyJoyOnline and 3News. Answering a question from the floor that he hides behind digitalisation to avoid the economy, he spoke for about five minutes on the Gold for Reserves programme, the gold sold by the Bank of Ghana, a US$1.7bn loss, mobile money and ECG. "If you don't understand digitalisation, ask for explanation," he said. He was in Japan on a study tour that included the University of Tokyo.

QMS checked nine claims from that answer against Bank of Ghana (BoG) data, IMF reports, the electricity regulator PURC and the World Gold Council. One is misleading, five are true or mostly true (two of them with a catch), one is exaggerated, one has roughly the right numbers but overstates the credit, and one is true on the numbers but tells half the story. The losses he described happened under both governments.

The scorecard

#	What he said	Verdict
1	Gold for Reserves had never been done anywhere else	Misleading
2	Ghana held 8.7 tonnes from independence to 2021	True
3	Reserves went from 8.7 to 31 tonnes "within two years"	Mostly true
4	"We refused to sell that gold"	Mostly true, with a catch
5	The new government sold half the gold	True on the numbers, half the story
6	US$1.7bn lost; "our way" would have had no losses	True figure, with a catch
7	MoMo grew from ₵76bn to ₵4.5tn because of interoperability	Exaggerated
8	You can buy power for a home in Accra from Japan	True
9	ECG went from ₵450m to ₵2bn a month after cash was stopped	Numbers roughly right, credit overstated

Was Gold for Reserves a world first?

Dr Bawumia said the programme "has never been done anywhere else in the world that I'm aware of". The Bank of Ghana, under Governor Ernest Addison and the NPP government, launched the Domestic Gold Purchase Programme on 17 June 2021. Two months earlier, on 26 April 2021, the World Gold Council published a report on central banks that already bought locally mined gold with local currency, among them the Philippines, Mongolia (since 1992), Ecuador and Ethiopia. Its survey found 19 of 36 central banks doing so. But he said "that I'm aware of", and QMS cannot fact-check what someone was aware of. QMS rates the claim misleading.

From 8.7 tonnes to 31

He said Ghana's gold reserves stood at 8.7 tonnes from independence to 2021. BoG figures put holdings at 280,872 ounces, about 8.7 tonnes, unchanged from 1996 to 2021, and a BoG official said in September 2021 that the bank was buying gold for the first time in about 60 years. True.

He said that "within two years" reserves went from 8.7 to 31 tonnes. The growth is real, but slower than he said. Holdings were still 8.78 tonnes in May 2023, reached 19.5 tonnes in December 2023 and stood at 30.53 tonnes at the end of December 2024, when his government handed over. That is three and a half years from the June 2021 launch. The 31-tonne mark was crossed in March 2025, under the NDC government. Mostly true.

"We refused to sell that gold"

The reserve pile was not drawn down during the 2022–23 crisis. But gold bought under the same programme was exchanged for fuel imports under Gold for Oil, which Dr Bawumia announced in November 2022. The BoG says 3.47 tonnes went that way in 2022 and US$1.55bn worth of gold in 2023, and the IMF says US$0.8bn more in 2024. Mostly true, with a catch.

Did the new government sell half the gold?

Yes, after first adding to it. President John Mahama's NDC government took over in January 2025 with 30.53 tonnes. Under BoG Governor Dr Johnson Asiama, holdings rose to a peak of 38.04 tonnes at the end of October 2025, then fell to 18.6 tonnes at the end of December 2025.

Governor Asiama says the BoG sold more than 19 tonnes, for a reported profit of about US$1.3bn, to rebalance the reserves, because gold had grown to more than 40% of them. Holdings have since been rebuilt to 25.2 tonnes in August 2026, still below the 30.53 tonnes handed over. QMS rated the claim true on the numbers but half the story: it leaves out that the government first made the pile bigger, and that the sale booked a gain.

The US$1.7bn loss

Dr Bawumia said the central bank lost US$1.7bn through the gold programme. The IMF's 2026 Article IV and sixth review reports, published on 4 August 2026, put the programme's losses at over US$1.7bn in 2025, under the NDC government, the BoG and GoldBod. The IMF links the losses to fees, discounts to buyers and the gap between the exchange rate used to buy the gold and the BoG's reference rate. Some outlets reported his figure in cedis; he said dollars, and the IMF figure is in dollars. The BoG's own audited accounts show a net gold-programme loss of ₵9.05bn for 2025.

He also said that if the gold had been handled his way, there would have been no losses. The BoG's own figures, released to Asempa FM under the Right to Information law, show a programme loss of ₵5.66bn in 2024, under the NPP government and Governor Addison, while the gold was being accumulated. SBM Intelligence, citing the IMF, puts the 2024 loss at about US$400m. The figure is true; the claim that his approach had no losses is not supported by the BoG's books.

Mobile money

He said mobile money transactions grew from ₵76bn a year to ₵4.5 trillion "because of interoperability". BoG figures show ₵78.5bn in 2016 and ₵4.54 trillion in 2025, so the growth is real. But interoperability, which lets users send money between networks, carried about ₵5.8bn of the ₵518bn that moved on mobile money in December 2025, around 1%. The interoperability contract was first signed in 2016 under the NDC government; the NPP government launched the service on 10 May 2018. Exaggerated.

He also said you can sit in Japan and buy electricity for a home in Accra. The ECG Power App, which he launched in February 2020 as Vice President, lets users buy prepaid credit for a meter. True.

ECG

He said ECG's collections went from ₵450m a month to ₵2bn a month after he stopped it taking cash. The Ministry of Finance's 2018 State Ownership Report puts ECG's 2016 turnover at ₵5,695.07m, about ₵475m a month, which supports his starting figure. In July 2023, Dr Bawumia himself put ECG's new monthly figure at ₵1.2bn. PURC's Cash Waterfall data, analysed by GhanaFact, shows the best month at ₵1.62bn, in June 2025. PURC also raised electricity tariffs several times in those years, including by 29.96% in February 2023, 18.36% for the second quarter of 2023 and 14.75% for the first half of 2025, and higher tariffs alone bring in more money.

On 8 July 2026, President Mahama also said ECG was collecting almost ₵2bn a month, crediting his government's reforms. The numbers are roughly right; the credit is overstated.

By the evening of 5 November, no response to the Tokyo remarks from the Bank of Ghana, GoldBod or the Ministry of Finance had been reported, and QMS had found none by 6 November.