I started reviewing public records on Bawa Rock Ltd, the company receiving billions of cedis (cumulatively over 100 billion cedis) to buy small scale gold from tier 1 and tier 2 buyers on behalf of the state. Given the significance of these transactions, I think it is fair to scrutinize the company and how it has emerged as the only aggregator in this value chain so far. This is nothing against the company or Goldbod.
Note that the Goldbod has two types of aggregator licenses: aggregator and self-financing aggregator. The aggregators get seed financing from Goldbod whereas self-financing aggregators use their own financing sources. So far, the Goldbod has just 1 licensed aggregator (Bawa Rock Ltd) and 51 self-financing aggregators.
There have been suggestions that the company, Bawa Rock, has been in existence for some time and has been active in the gold trading business. We have seen a certificate of incorporation dated 2015.
Before the establishment of Goldbod, licences for gold trading were issued by the Minerals Commission. I reviewed the list of licensed gold buying companies as of October 2024. Note that the Minerals Commissionβs website has been offline for some time, so I relied on an archived version of the site. Bawa Rock Ltd did not appear on that list. See full list here:
web.archive.org/web/20250424β¦
The Minerals Commission also maintains a portal for mining licences, which includes gold trading licences. On that portal, I found a company called Bawa Rock Mining Ltd. This company was incorporated on December 2, 2024. It appears to have small scale mining licence applications in progress as of April 15, 2025, but no trading licences. See here:
ghana.revenuedev.org/owner
I also went through the mining industry reports published by the Ghana Chamber of Mines from 2020 to 2024. These reports contain data on gold volumes traded by licensed buyers. Bawa Rock did not appear in any of these reports in any of the years. You can find the reports here:
ghanachamberofmines.org/mediβ¦
Based on this initial research, a few questions come to mind:
- Public records show no activity by this company in the gold trading business prior to the establishment of Goldbod. How did it emerge as the sole aggregator?
- Was the company previously operating under a different name?
- Does it have the right experience to handle transactions of this magnitude?
- Why is there only one licensed private aggregator receiving public funds to buy gold on behalf of the state?
- How much gold are the self-financing aggregators buying?
This is preliminary research based on publicly available information. Happy to update my notes if more information comes to light.