Ghana’s recent drawdown in Gross International Reserves (GIR) is emerging as a significant test of the Government’s ambitious Ghana Accelerated National Reserve Accumulation Policy (GANRAP), placing greater pressure on the Ministry of Finance, Bank of Ghana (BoG) and Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod) to convert the country’s substantial gold resources into usable foreign-exchange buffers.

The latest data indicate that Ghana’s GIR rose from US$13.83 billion at end-2025 to US$14.16 billion in March 2026, before declining to US$12.94 billion at end-June and further to about US$11.07 billion at end-August. The August level represents a reduction of approximately US$3.1 billion from the March peak and has reduced import cover from around 5.8 months in March to about 4.2 months in August.

The deterioration is significant because GANRAP, approved by Parliament in February, is designed precisely to prevent Ghana from returning to the external vulnerability experienced during the 2022 crisis. The policy established an interim target of 8.6 months of import cover by end-2026, rising to 11.8 months by end-2027 and 15 months by end-2028.

At the end of 2025, Ghana appeared to have a substantial head start. Reserves stood at US$13.8 billion, equivalent to 5.7 months of imports under the domestic measurement, and the Ministry of Finance presented the accumulation programme as a structural shift away from borrowing to build foreign-exchange buffers. The policy envisages gold as its principal strategic anchor.

The subsequent decline, however, means that the authorities now have to accomplish two tasks simultaneously: replace the reserves that have been drawn down and generate enough additional reserves to meet the ambitious GANRAP trajectory.

GoldBod becomes increasingly important

This puts GoldBod at the centre of the reserve-rebuilding effort.

Under the new collaborative financing model introduced in August, GoldBod generated US$1.315 billion of foreign exchange in August, of which US$646.59 million was made available to the BoG for reserve accumulation, while US$668.21 million was sold to commercial banks to support foreign-exchange liquidity. GoldBodsubsequently projected US$1.4 billion of FX generation for September, with up to US$700 million earmarked for BoG reserve accumulation.

If that September target is achieved and the full US$700 million reaches reserves, it would provide a meaningful immediate boost. But it would not, by itself, reverse the entire recent deterioration.

Indeed, even two months of US$700 million monthly reserve contributions would amount to only US$1.4 billion. This illustrates the scale of the challenge: the fall between March and August was roughly US$3.1 billion.

The BoG has therefore indicated that rebuilding reserves will be a priority, while simultaneously having to manage foreign-exchange demand and exchange-rate volatility. At its September MPC meeting, Governor Dr Johnson Pandit Asiama identified declining reserves, a projected current-account deficit and the interruption of GoldBod gold exports since mid-August among the risks requiring close monitoring.

Can the short-term target still be achieved?

The end-2026 GANRAP target of 8.6 months of import cover now looks considerably more demanding than it did when the policy was introduced.

Moving from approximately 4.2 months in August to 8.6 months by December would require an extraordinary increase in reserves over only four months. Even allowing for stronger fourth-quarter gold receipts, seasonal export inflows and potentially lower FX intervention requirements, the arithmetic represents a substantial challenge.

The more immediate and realistic objective may therefore be to stabilize reserves and halt the decline, before rebuilding the buffer progressively.

The medium-term target is less dependent on a single quarter’s performance though and Dr Asiama has correctly pointed out that with regards to GANRAP’s ultimate targets these are still early days. GoldBod’s increased FX-generation capacity, continued fiscal consolidation, stronger non-traditional exports, higher remittances and reduced foreign-exchange requirements for the energy sector could progressively strengthen accumulation.

GANRAP itself identifies energy-sector FX savings, cocoa-sector recovery, new oil production, remittances and non-traditional exports as complementary sources of external-balance improvement.

There is, however, an important difference between the Government’s 15-month ambition and the IMF’s more conservative assessment. The IMF considers about six months of prospective imports an appropriate reserve-adequacy benchmark for Ghana, reflecting its commodity dependence and exposure to terms-of-trade and capital-flow shocks. It projects that this level could be reached by 2029. The Fund has also cautioned that accumulating substantially more reserves carries opportunity and sterilization costs.

Implications for imports and debt service

For importers, the decline does not imply an immediate inability to pay for goods and services. Dr Asiama points out that a reserve stock equivalent to more than four months of imports remains a substantial buffer

But the reduced cushion makes foreign-exchange management more important, particularly if petroleum prices remain elevated, import demand accelerates or the cedi comes under renewed pressure.

The same applies to external debt servicing. Ghana is moving into a period in which external debt-service obligations remain significant despite the extensive restructuring programme. IMF projections put external debt service at approximately US$4.3 billion in 2026 and US$4.1 billion in 2027, although restructuring agreements and payment schedules affect the timing and actual cash requirements.

That makes reserve accumulation more than a statistical exercise. Every dollar retained in the reserve account improves the authorities’ capacity to meet scheduled external obligations without excessive recourse to new borrowing or disruptive foreign-exchange-market intervention.

For the Ministry of Finance, the implication is that fiscal discipline must remain an integral part of reserve policy. For the BoG, it means balancing reserve accumulation against the need to supply dollars to the market and prevent disorderly exchange-rate movements. For GoldBod, it raises the importance of maintaining reliable gold purchases, financing arrangements and export flows.

The challenge for Ghana is therefore not simply to achieve a headline reserve number. It is to establish a sustainable mechanism through which gold exports and other foreign-exchange earnings consistently exceed the combined requirements of imports, debt service and other external payments.

GANRAP has provided the framework. The sharp decline in reserves during 2026 means that the coming months will test whether the framework can deliver accumulation at the speed envisaged or whether Ghana will need a longer transition toward the policy’s medium-term reserve ambitions.