Kwasi Kwarteng

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Kwasi Kwarteng Legal Practitioner & Fmr. Spokesperson Ministry Education, Ghana.

1. The CSSPS placement policy is not the same as the Free SHS policy. My argument concerns the criteria government uses ...
06/09/2026

1. The CSSPS placement policy is not the same as the Free SHS policy. My argument concerns the criteria government uses to determine who gets placed in senior high school.

2. Under the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia administration, a student who passed either English or Maths at BECE could still be placed in SHS and given an opportunity to justify himself or herself. Those who failed both subjects were given the opportunity to rewrite the BECE at government’s cost.

3. The current NDC government has changed this placement threshold. This largely explains the reported figure of over 54,000 students said to have “failed.” Many have not necessarily failed per se; rather, a difficult government placement policy has rendered them ineligible for SHS placement.

4. Quality and standards matter, but education cannot be pursued on quality alone. A progressive education system must balance access, quality and relevance. We cannot improve quality simply by erecting barriers that exclude thousands of young people without giving them an opportunity to prove themselves. Interestingly, some of these same students proceed to private SHSs and perform well.

5. The same concern applies to the rigid D7 barrier in our universities. While other jurisdictions create access pathways and support programmes for students to overcome academic deficiencies, we too often simply shut the door.

6. How does a Visual Arts student with a D7 become unfit for a Ghanaian university, yet enter another educational system abroad and be developed into a world-class architect? Same applies to most of our Ukraine & Cuba trained doctors. They got denied in their own country, but Ukraine embraced them.

7. There is therefore a legitimate question; having struggled to eliminate the double-track system they strongly criticised, is government now reducing SHS enrolment through obnoxious placement criteria to make double track easier to end without the corresponding expansion in infrastructure and capacity?

8. That is the issue I am raising not the review of the Free SHS policy.

1. The debate over the IMF’s reported GH¢22 billion loss under Ghana’s Domestic Gold Purchase Programme (DGPP) appears t...
21/08/2026

1. The debate over the IMF’s reported GH¢22 billion loss under Ghana’s Domestic Gold Purchase Programme (DGPP) appears to have been pushed to two extreme narratives. Neither, in my view, fully captures the real accountability question.

2. First, it is simply incorrect to claim that there was no loss. Paragraph 50, page 27 of the 2026 IMF Article IV Consultation and Sixth Review under Ghana’s Extended Credit Facility; IMF Country Report No. 26/212 expressly states that the DGPP generated losses of approximately GH¢22 billion in 2025, about 1.5% of GDP.

3. But it is equally important to be precise about what the IMF actually says. The Fund does not directly describe the GH¢22 billion as a loss in GoldBod’s corporate accounts. Its analysis principally locates the losses within the Bank of Ghana’s operations under the DGPP. Therefore, on a strict and literal reading of the IMF report, one may justifiable argue that GoldBod as an entity hasnt made any such lost on it’s books. That distinction, however, cannot become an excuse to avoid the larger accountability question.

4. GoldBod says its audited accounts recorded an operational surplus of approximately GH¢910 million. That may be true, but a surplus on GoldBod’s books does not make the GH¢22 billion loss identified by the IMF disappear from the State’s books. More importantly, GoldBod was a central participant in the gold-purchasing architecture. Indeed, Government and GoldBod have repeatedly taken credit for the foreign exchange generated through the programme, the accumulation of reserves and the resulting stability of the cedi.

5. If GoldBod can legitimately share in the credit for the benefits of the programme, then its role in the costs associated with producing those benefits could not be that passive and therefore must equally be open to scrutiny. That, in my view, is where the Minority’s demand for accountability, led by Hon.Alexander kwamena Afenyo-Markin, becomes important.

6. The debate therefore should not be reduced to the narrow accounting question of whether the GH¢22 billion appears specifically as a loss in GoldBod’s audited financial statements. Rather the more important question should be that; when the operations of GoldBod, the Bank of Ghana and Government under the DGPP are considered together, what was the true net cost to the Ghanaian taxpayer? And having established that cost, we must ask whether the economic benefits justified it.

7. In other words, was GH¢22 billion a reasonable price for achieving these outcomes, or could substantially the same benefits have been achieved at a significantly lower cost? That is the accountability question Government must answer. For economic benefits alone do nor extinguishe the obligation to account for their cost.

8. The IMF has identified a GH¢22 billion loss. GoldBod reports a GH¢910 million operational surplus. Both facts can coexist. What Ghanaians deserve now is a transparent reconciliation of the two and a full account of who ultimately absorbed the GH¢22 billion cost, how it arose, and whether it represented value for money.

9. You cannot take credit for the benefits of a programme while treating its costs as somebody else’s problem.

Agogo-Asante Akyem North
21/12/2025

Agogo-Asante Akyem North

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