Rising Gold Prices: Current price spike won’t last long – Chamber of Mines CEO

January 30, 2026

The Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Chamber of Mines, Ing. Kenneth Ashigbey, has expressed skepticism about the sustainability of the current rally in gold prices, warning that the spike may be temporary.

Acknowledging that although the surge in prices has benefited mining operations, he emphasized that the industry values price stability over short-term spikes.

“Definitely it would be good on the mining firms, mostly good for the government, but the most important thing that you want is some stability. And we all know that the spike that we’re seeing is not a spike that is going to last long,” he said on Joy News’ PM Express on Thursday.

His comment comes as gold continues a steady rise, with prices climbing more than 27% since the start of 2026, following a 64% surge in 2025. On Wednesday, gold futures reached an intraday high of $5,586.20 before settling around $5,535 per ounce, a performance described as “one of the most dramatic rallies in the commodity’s history,” Bloomberg reported.

Ken Ashigbey explained that while the price surge is generally beneficial, not all mining companies can immediately capitalize on the higher prices due to pre-existing contractual arrangements.

“You should bear in mind that there are some of the mining firms that based on investment decisions that they have made, they are still selling gold at some older price though today’s price of gold is at $5,000,” he explained. “But anybody else who is doing the business whether it’s large scale, small scale is definitely benefiting out of it.”

He noted that Ghana’s increased export revenues point to both higher production volumes and improved profit margins from the rising gold prices.

“When you did a graph and you saw all of the value of export that we have done, not all of that represent the volume, some of that is also coming from the profit margin,” Ken Ashigbey said. “Nobody can run away from the fact that yes, it’s beneficial and it’s definitely for anybody who is doing this business, you want to make sure that you are happy when prices go up, but we are very careful of the windfall.”

With the current price spike, reports indicate that several financial institutions have revised their forecasts upward.

Reuters reports that Swiss investment bank and world’s largest wealth manager, UBS expects gold prices to end 2026 at $5,900, “while other analysts see prices settling between $4,000 and $5,000 per ounce with potential upside if investors continue shifting traditional equity and bond exposure into gold ETFs.”