US$ 3.6bn of gold smuggled from January 2014 to January 2016

More than US$3.6 billion worth of gold has been smuggled to India in the last two years, causing the country to lose about US$360 million in tax revenues to the state.

Checks by the Graphic Business show that a series of carefully spun web of illegal shipment of a total of 101,179.00 kilogrammes of gold valued at US$3,607,415,756.36 were smuggled out of Ghana to India without official documentation.

Statistics from Zauba Technologies and Data Services of India show trails of smuggled gold from Ghana to India.

In a bid to curb the rising spate of gold smuggling, the Bank of Ghana issued new directives instructing gold exporters to channel all their exports through the Precious Minerals Marketing Company (PMMC).

The requirements were to ensure that all licensed gold exporters would secure new documents from the Bank of Ghana to aid their exports.

The directive was in line with its foreign exchange Act to streamline gold exports.