Business News of Sunday, 9 July 2017
Source: citifmonline.com
2017-07-09
Analysts call on government to intensify laws governing mineral resources
Some analysts in the mining industry want government to intensify laws governing the management of mineral resources to give value to citizens.
They argued that the current practice where managers overlook certain best practices has serious implications if unchecked.
These are the outcomes of the 2017 Resource Governance Index report which ranked Ghana 13th in resource governance, out of 81 countries globally under 89 categories.
The report pointed out that Ghana measures favorably compared to its peers within the sub-region actively engaged in mining and oil and gas activities.
Even though Ghana ranked 13th at the global level in the Oil and Gas Resource Governance category, it placed 1st out of 19 countries in Africa.
Similarly, the country was only preceded by Botswana, Burkina Faso and South Africa to place 4th in resource management in the mining sector.
The concern for the industry analysts however dwells largely on the poor performance in revenue management especially in the mining of resources such as gold, bauxite and diamond.
According to them, even though Ghana has clear rules for sharing mineral revenues via the Mineral Development Fund, disclosures of revenue are not timely or audited.
In an interview with Citi Business News, the African Parliamentary Capacity Development Officer, for the Natural Resource Governance Institute in charge of Ghana, Tanzania and Uganda.
Adams Fusheini said the governing bodies in charge of the mining sectors should deal with the challenges in the country’s mining sector since it serves as a good source of revenue needed for economic development.
“I will say that, the responsibility is there for us to see how to address the challenges related to the environment sector as far as mining is concerned because it is providing very relevant source of income to many families and very good revenue, though we want it to be up more than it is now.
It’s a source of revenue to the government and without revenue to government it’s a big challenge,” he stressed.
Other areas Mr. Fusheini wants the government to address include the creation of the enabling environment which refers to key governance issues such as media accountability as well as value realization where the necessary legislations for tax mobilization are enforced.
He was however optimistic of a turnaround in the mining sector, if parliamentarians hold the various managers accountable for the effective execution of their mandate.
“There is always room for improvement in any situation even in the advanced world so to that extent, Ghana doesn’t have the capacity at this moment to manage the sector as other advanced economies will do but I will sight that parliament has a lot of room to up its game if parliament is working as an institution of parliament over seeing its agencies.
Ghana needs to be doing well in enforcing its own laws,” he said.
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