Kumasi, March 25, GNA – The Minerals Income Investment Fund (MIIF) will focus its investment this year on industrial salt production.
The move is to help boost the supply of industrial salt to feed the booming oil and gas industry.
Mr Edward Nana Yaw Koranteng, MIIF Chief Executive Officer, who announced this, said Ghana had the potential to produce all the industrial salt for oil industry.
“This year, one of the minerals MIIF wants to focus its interest on is the industrial salt, the salt that we need for oil and gas.
We know Ghana and Senegal are the only countries in West Africa producing this industrial salt.
We want to venture into that area to boost production to feed our oil and gas wells,” the CEO said.
Mr Koranteng announced this during interaction with some journalists in Kumasi to begin a tour to some mining communities in the Ashanti region.
According to the CEO, the tour in the region was to help identify some of the challenges facing mining companies, especially in the payment of royalties.
It will also afford the MIIF an opportunity to interact with the non-gold players in the sector like the quarries, to know their challenges with regards to royalty payment.
Some of the places to be visited are Obuasi, Bibiani, Amansie, among others.
The Minerals Income Investment Act was passed in 2018 to, among other things, monetise the country’s mineral resources for the government’s infrastructural development projects.
It is also to monetise the mineral’s income accruing to the country, develop and implement measures to reduce the budgetary exposure of Ghana to minerals income fluctuations.
Mr. Koranteng also said this year MIIF would roll out a $500-million investment in the small-scale mining sector.
The six-year investment, which would be rolled out in September this year, would help deal with key issues affecting the sector, such as environmental pollution, under-reporting and lack of capital investment.
According to him, the investment package, which would be spearheaded through a special purpose initiative, dubbed ‘MIIF Small-Scale Incubation’ is designed to help formalise the small-scale mining sector, not only to promote environmental sustainable mining, but also to create local mining champions.
The Small-Scale Incubation Programme, he explained, evolved from President Akufo-Addo’s plan to sanitise and bring value to the small-scale mining sector through mining community development, creating champions and adding value to their produce.
“We intend to introduce what we call the Small-scale Mining Incubation Programme with the objective to see how we can help develop the small-scale mining sector, turning it into mid-tier fully owned Ghanaian company which will impact the entire mining value chain to create jobs and transform the community.”
Mr Koranteng added that MIIF had acquired a 3.5 per cent stake in the Asante Gold Corporation in line with its vision to hold stakes in high performing mining companies.
GNA