According to a report by the nonprofit Swissaid, Ghana loses billions of dollars every year as a result of smuggling from the thriving artisanal gold mining sector, with a large portion of the gold going to the United Arab Emirates. The majority of the smuggled gold ended up in Dubai, and the report discovered a startling 229 metric ton trade gap, or $11.4 billion, between Ghana's gold exports and corresponding imports over just five years.

Ulf Laessing, who oversees the Sahel program at Germany's Konrad Adenauer Foundation and studies artisanal mining and insurgency in the region, said, "This is just the tip of the iceberg," according to a Reuters report filed from Dakar, Senegal.
 The statement, "Hand-carried gold does not have to be declared in Dubai... informal gold is mostly brought in on flights," draws attention to additional covert ways that gold from Africa is smuggled into the United Arab Emirates.
 According to the Swissaid report, most of Ghana's gold is smuggled to Togo before arriving in Dubai, while some bullion uses porous borders to cross Burkina Faso and enter Mali. The findings of Swissaid were referred to as "a notorious fact" by a senior official at Ghana's regulatory Minerals Commission.

 A request for comment from Ghana's finance ministry was not answered. According to the report, Africa's leading gold producer implemented a 3% withholding tax on artisanal gold exports in 2019, which had a disastrous effect, causing declared exports to plummet while smuggling increased. The trend was partially reversed in 2022 when the government lowered the tax to 1.5%, resulting in a recovery in formal exports.
 Ghana's finance minister abolished the tax in March and credited policy changes for this year's spike in artisanal exports. According to the Swissaid report published on June 11, an estimated 34 tons of the nation's 2023 gold output went unreported, which is roughly equal to the total amount of artisanal production that year.

 SLOW REFORMS

 Ghana has increased reforms to centralize and clean up the gold trade, which generated $11.6 billion in revenue last year.

 Africa's gold-producing countries routinely report lower exports than what importing countries, especially the United Arab Emirates, declare as receipts, a trend that is reflected in its experience. Dubai's reforms and new tab to stop gold smuggling haven't had much of an impact. According to a May UN report, over 10 million people in sub-Saharan Africa depend on informal mining for their livelihoods, but it is also increasingly being used as a source of funding for armed conflict and organized crime.

 "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.