By Nicholas Osei-Wusu.
The Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources is working closely with its Finance Counterpart to secure a Landing Bullion Market Certification that will allow Ghana to refine Gold for direct trading on the global market.
Additionally, the construction of a 400-kilogram per day Gold Refinery being jointly undertaken by the Precious Minerals Marketing Company and the Royal Ghana Gold Limited to refine Gold from Ghana is about 90% complete.
The move is towards value addition to raw Gold to boost the local economy.
The Minister for Lands and Natural Resources, Samuel Abu Jinapor, disclosed these in Kumasi at the 1st Public Lecture by the Kumasi Campus of the Ghana Law School.
The 1st Public Lecture, organized by the Ghana Law School, which was supported by some State Agencies, was patronized by interests in the Mining Sector.
The Lecture focused on the legal regime of the Mining Sector in Ghana.
President of the Students’ Representative Council of the Ghana Law School, Wonder Victor Kutor, explained that, the program is mandatory, for them, according to the SRC’s Constitution.
Also, enactment of new Acts to regulate the Mining Sector informed choice of the topic and the Speaker.
The Speaker, Mr. Samuel Abu Jinapor, Minister for Lands and Natural Resources, took the participants through Ghana’s Mining history, including ownership, legal regimes and frameworks, challenges and the way forward.
He noted that the Mining Sector has always been replete with laws and regulations from the Colonial era with stools, skins and families with interest in mineral deposits given recognition.
According to Mr. Jinapor, despite the huge economic prospects of the sector to propel Ghana into a developed nation, inadequate investment by successive governments, the lack of appropriate linkages of the various sub sectors relative to the available mineral deposits, over reliance on Gold as well as the unbridled exportation of raw minerals have robbed the national economy of deriving maximum monetary benefits from the sector.
Touching on the way forward for Ghana to increase her benefits from the mineral deposits, the Lands and Natural Resources Minister noted that the government is seriously pursuing various agenda covering Iron, Bauxite and Gold in particular with a focus on value addition, building the appropriate linkages in the value chains, manpower development by research, Universities and Technical and Vocational Skills Training to ensure adequate local content in the Minerals Mining Sector.
Mr. Jinapor expressed the hope that, with the strategies being implemented by the current government, Ghana could move away from the Guggisberg economy to a value-added one capable of turning around the economic fortunes of the country.
