Ghana is losing billions of dollars in revenue annually to smuggling from its booming artisanal gold mining sector with much of the gold flowing to the United Arab Emirates, according to a report by nonprofit Swissaid.

The report found a staggering 229 metric ton trade gap, equivalent to $11.4 billion, between Ghana's gold exports and corresponding imports over just five years, with most of the smuggled gold ending up in Dubai.

"This is just the tip of the iceberg," said Ulf Laessing, head of the Sahel programme at Germany's Konrad Adenauer Foundation, who analyses insurgency and artisanal mining operations in the region. 

"Hand-carried gold does not have to be declared in Dubai ... informal gold is mostly brought in on flights," highlighting other opaque ways Africa's gold is smuggled into the UAE.

The Swissaid report said Ghana's gold is largely smuggled to Togo before ending up in Dubai while some bullion passes through Burkina Faso into Mali, using porous borders.  

A senior official at Ghana’s regulatory Minerals Commission described Swissaid's findings as "a notorious fact". 

Ghana’s finance ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

The report noted how a 3% withholding tax on artisanal gold exports imposed by Africa's top gold producer in 2019 backfired dramatically, as declared exports collapsed while smuggling surged.

The government's reduction of the tax to 1.5% in 2022 partially reversed the trend, with formal exports rebounding.

In March, Ghana’s finance minister scrapped the tax, subsequently praising policy reforms for a surge in artisanal exports this year.

An estimated 34 tons of the country’s 2023 gold output were undeclared – approximately the same amount recorded as the country’s total artisanal production for that year, according to the Swissaid report released on June 11. 

SLOW REFORMS
Ghana earned $11.6 billion in revenue from gold exports last year and has stepped up reforms to centralise and clean up the trade.

Its experience mirrors a continent-wide pattern where Africa's gold-producing nations consistently report lower exports than what importing countries, particularly the UAE, declare as receipts. Reforms by Dubai to curb gold smuggling have yielded limited results.

Informal mining provides livelihoods for over 10 million people in sub-Saharan Africa, according to a May UN report, but increasingly it serves as a funding channel for organised crime and armed conflict.    

"While the new government has shown some willingness to fix some governance issues that have bedeviled the gold sector for years, and which were largely ignored by the previous administration, its pace has been quite slow," said Bright Simons of Accra-based think tank Imani Center for Policy and Education.