‘Show us the data!’ – Bright Simons crashes with Senyo Hosi on gold smuggling figures

Two of Ghana’s finest policy analysts, Bright Simons and Senyo Hosi, were at each other’s throats while debating the impact of the Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod) on live TV.

During a panel discussion on ChannelOne TV, Bright Simons, a vice president of IMANI Africa, said that the GoldBod cannot be said to have eradicated the smuggling of gold in the country.

He argued that the activities of the GoldBod are insufficient to eradicate gold smuggling in Ghana, adding that the arrests by the board alone show that the problem still exists.

“When you want to stop smuggling, your primary targeting has to be law-enforcement-driven intelligence and things like that. It cannot only be incentives. So that’s number one. Number two, once the smuggling continues to happen, which the GoldBod itself admits, and they continue to catch people… we must focus our minds not on the view that through some metaphysical mechanism, they’ve cleared out all smuggling. We don’t know the numbers,” he said.

But his assertion did not sit well with Senyo Hosi, the Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Chamber of Bulk Oil Distributors, who said that the GoldBod has never said it has eradicated gold smuggling in the country.

Hosi argued that figures on Ghana’s gold export, which show an increase, can be used to extrapolate that the board was making some progress in the prevention of smuggling.

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Simons then came in and asserted that the data available to him show that no progress has been made in the fight against gold smuggling.

“The smuggling dynamic is hard to estimate, but we know that the incentives have not changed. When we go to the importing side, and we look at the numbers, our data suggests that those gaps persist,” he said.

Hosi interjected and challenged the IMANI vice president to produce the data he had.

“What data do you have for 2025 to show that it persists? Don’t say ‘our data.’ Show us the data. Show your data. You keep pontificating that you have something, but you don’t have it. The data doesn’t exist,” he said.

He added, “Tell everybody what the UAE told you, that you are saying it still shows that the gaps exist.”

Simons insisted that data from offtakers in the gold market show there is a problem, but Hosi did not allow him to continue and insisted that he share the data he had.

Watch the incident below:

BAI

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