Finance Minister Unveils Ghana’s First National Reserve Accumulation Policy
The Minister for Finance, Dr. Cassiel Ato Forson, has unveiled Ghana’s first comprehensive national policy aimed at intentionally and sustainably building the country’s external reserves and securing long-term macroeconomic stability.
The Ghana Accelerated National Reserve Accumulation Policy (GANRAP) 2026-2028, launched on February 25, seeks to increase Ghana’s international reserves to 15 months of import cover by the end of 2028, a move government says will support structural transformation while safeguarding economic stability.
Presenting the policy on the floor of Parliament, Dr. Forson described the initiative as a historic shift in how Ghana manages its external buffers, moving away from costly borrowing and short-term reserve-building measures toward a structured, gold-backed and reform-driven framework.
He said the policy builds on the macroeconomic turnaround recorded in 2025 following the 2022–2023 economic crisis.
“The Ghana Accelerated National Reserve Accumulation Policy presents a strategic plan to strengthen external resilience by increasing the nation’s international reserves to an equivalent of fifteen months of import cover by end-2028,” he declared.
According to the finance minister, GANRAP will rely heavily on a gold-based reserve accumulation strategy, complemented by structural measures to expand non-traditional exports, improve cocoa productivity, mobilise remittances, develop new oil fields and address persistent foreign-exchange leakages particularly in the energy sector, while maintaining fiscal discipline.
As part of the plan, government aims to raise reserve coverage by roughly 9.3 months of import cover over the next three years, supported by a weekly gold purchase target of about 3.02 tonnes, projected to generate annual gross receipts of approximately US$25.3 billion.
Dr. Forson stressed that borrowing to build reserves is unsustainable and contributed to the country’s 2022 debt distress. In contrast, he noted that the Ghana Gold Board generated about US$10 billion in foreign exchange in 2025 at a significantly lower cost compared with external borrowing.
He urged Parliament to support what he described as a forward-looking framework designed to strengthen Ghana’s first line of defence against external shocks.
The policy’s broader objective, he said, is to establish a resilient reserve management system capable of sustaining investor confidence, improving living standards and securing long-term prosperity.
With the unveiling of GANRAP, Ghana becomes one of the few African countries to adopt a structured, legislatively anchored reserve accumulation strategy driven largely by domestic resource mobilisation rather than external borrowing.
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