General News of Friday, 21 July 2017
Source: www.ghanaweb.com
2017-07-21
Deputy General Secretary of the NDC, Koku Anyidoho
Deputy General Secretary of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) Koku Anyidoho has described governments move to sign a $19 billion memorandum of understanding (MOU) with China to develop Ghana’s bauxite industry as absurd.
The deal which was announced by the Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia after a four-day visit to China allows the Xin Jinping government to access to tap resources including 960 million metric tons of Bauxite,2.8 billion metric tons of iron ore, 413 million tons of limestone, and 430 million metric tons of Manganese.
Government has received several criticisms, especially from the opposition, for this move as the new government condemned the previous government strongly on its rapid borrowing.
In an interview after the NDC press conference their assessment of the 6 month old government, Deputy General Secretary of the NDC, Koku Anyidoho said governments deal with China was a daft move.
“We are trying very hard to deal with galamsey, we have not finished. Now you are going to bring the Chinese in to come and mine your bauxite indiscriminately because of $19 billion, is that smartness? That is daftness,” he explained.
The press conference saw the NDC criticize the Nana Addo administration on several issues with much emphasis on national security.
The Vice president has however defended this move saying, “Ghana needs to leverage its natural resources”.
Dr. Bawumia went on to explain the initiative saying, “We have immediate infrastructure needs of say between US $15 to 20 billion in areas such as rail, water, energy and so on. So we have US $460 billion potentially sitting in the ground somewhere and we need US$ 20billion for our rapid economic transformation.
So we need development partners to refine this bauxite, but we want to develop it in Ghana. That is why we want to set up a refinery in Ghana so we can refine and export”.
