Gold held its value this summer. Ghanaians who owned it still lost money.
Over three months the metal was flat in dollars and the cedi strengthened, so the Ghana Gold Coin fell nearly 4% in cedis. The coin did exactly what it was built to do. That is the point.
Between 1 June and 28 August 2026 the price of gold barely moved. It opened the period at $4,545.95 an ounce and closed it at $4,568.95 — up half a percent.
Over those same three months a one-ounce Ghana Gold Coin fell from GH₵55,181.16 to GH₵53,013.65. Down 3.93%.
Nothing went wrong. The coin tracked the metal precisely. What changed was the cedi, which strengthened from 11.735 to the dollar to 11.215 — a gain of 4.4%.
The arithmetic, in full
A gold coin priced in cedis is the dollar gold price multiplied by the exchange rate. Both numbers are printed on the same Bank of Ghana circular every working day, which is what makes this checkable.
At the start of June: $4,545.95 × 11.735 = GH₵53,347 of metal. At the end of August: $4,568.95 × 11.215 = GH₵51,240.
A fall of 3.95%, against the coin's 3.93%. The two agree, because the coin is the metal and the coin's price is the metal's price converted.
Which is the opposite of what a hedge is supposed to do
Gold is recommended to Ghanaian savers as protection. The thing most of them want protecting from is the cedi losing value — and over this period the cedi did the opposite.
That is not a fault in the coin. A currency hedge pays when the currency falls and costs you when it rises. This quarter it rose. A holder who bought for protection got the mechanism they paid for, working in the direction that does not help.
The same arithmetic runs the other way when the cedi weakens, which it has done far more often than not. Somebody deciding today should understand that they are taking a position on the exchange rate, not stepping outside it.
The smallest coin costs the most
Bank of Ghana issues three sizes, and the premium over the metal in them is not the same:
| Premium over metal | Price, 28 Aug 2026 | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 oz | 3.58% | GH₵53,014 |
| ½ oz | 4.83% | GH₵26,858 |
| ¼ oz | 7.75% | GH₵13,803 |
The quarter-ounce carries more than twice the premium of the full ounce. It is the coin a smaller saver can afford, and it is the one that costs most for the gold inside it.
That is ordinary for minted coins — the cost of striking and distributing a coin does not fall in proportion to its weight — but it is rarely stated where a buyer will see it before paying.
After inflation
Annualised from this three-month window, and measured against Ghanaian inflation, the one-ounce coin returns −18.99% a year. The half-ounce −18.91%, the quarter-ounce −18.76%.
Those are annualised figures from a single quarter, not a loss of 19% over three months. A quarter is a short window to annualise from and the number should be read as a rate rather than an outcome. It is shown because the alternative — a nominal figure with no inflation beside it — is half a number.
One more thing
Bank of Ghana published a Ghana Gold Coin pricing circular every working day from launch. Their notice list shows the most recent dated 2 September 2026. Nothing has appeared since.
They may resume. But a daily price that stops without notice is worth recording, and a saver holding the coin has no published price to value it against.
Figures from Bank of Ghana's own daily pricing circulars, read from the documents themselves. Our series covers 1 June to 28 August 2026 — 54 daily prices from 56 circulars — so nothing here describes the period before that. The London reference price and the exchange rate are printed on the same circular as the coin price, which is what allows the calculation to be checked rather than taken on trust.
Know when the numbers change
When the numbers move, what moved and where it came from. Treasury bill rates, bank lending costs, fund charges, inflation, and who is on the regulators’ registers — taken from Bank of Ghana, the Ghana Stock Exchange, the Statistical Service and the Securities and Exchange Commission as they publish. No schedule, because the institutions do not keep one either.
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