The 2027 Budget Statement gives two different figures for Ghana's gross international reserves at the end of September 2026: US$12.7 billion in paragraph 545 and US$12.1 billion in paragraph 787.
Paragraph 769, in the first-nine-months section, also uses US$12.1 billion. The gap is US$600 million, about GHS 7.0 billion at the Bank of Ghana's 12 November mid-rate of GHS 11.71. Both the US$12.7 billion and US$12.1 billion versions say the reserves cover 4.5 months of imports.
The discrepancy was raised on Friday by Dr Mohammed Amin Adam, Ranking Member of Parliament's Finance Committee, at a briefing reported by MyJoyOnline. StatsGH checked each of his examples against the Statement presented on 12 November, and each one holds.
Capital expenditure for 2027 is put at GHS 98.4 billion in paragraph 823, GHS 98.3 billion in paragraph 1611 and GHS 100.4 billion (GHS 100,406,301,286) in the Appendix 3A fiscal table, a spread of GHS 2.1 billion. Paragraph 1025 says the government's assessment "identifies five principal risks", then lists four: commodity prices, revenue leakages, payroll and wage commitments, and litigation and judgement debts.
The Big Push road programme appears at GHS 27.8 billion, GHS 28 billion and GHS 29.8 billion, as StatsGH reported earlier on Friday.
Which reserves figure is right? The Bank of Ghana has not yet published an end-September number. Its latest, in the 24 September Monetary Policy Committee press release, was US$12.0 billion as at 22 September.
The committee's Decision Statement puts the end-December 2025 level at US$13.8 billion. The 22 September print sits closer to the Budget's US$12.1 billion, but a week of gold receipts can move reserves, so the US$12.7 billion figure cannot be ruled out on the documents alone.
The catch: none of these gaps changes the Budget's headline arithmetic on its own, and some may be rounding or drafting slips rather than competing policies. The capital-spending sentence in paragraph 1612 ("over GHS 37 billion or 61 percent more than" interest of GHS 61 billion) is built on the GHS 98.3 billion figure, so the speech and the appendix table are working from different totals.
Parliament will approve appropriations against one number. Until the Ministry of Finance says which, MPs, contractors and the Auditor-General will be measuring 2027 against a moving target.
Related: 2027 Budget: US$10 billion New Economy programme (an earlier update to that story noted the US$12.7 billion versus US$12.1 billion reserves figures and the GHS 98.4 billion versus GHS 100.4 billion capital-spending lines); Big Push gets GHS 27.8bn in 2027.