Ghana’s mining stakeholders have called on government to establish a regulatory body for the promotion of transparency and accountability in the sector.
The development follows the report from the 2017 Resource Governance Index which shows the country’s mining revenues are on the decline – far behind income from oil and gas sector.
The report also revealed that over the last one year, the mining sector scored 37 out of 100 points as compared to its oil and gas sector which scored 65 out of 100 points in revenue management.
More notably, the 2017 RGI report ranked Ghana’s mining sector at 64 out of 89 countries assessed – indicating a poor performance in this critical aspect of the nation’s economy.
Reacting to the development, Vice Chairman of the Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC), Kwame Jantuah, expressed the view that the sector was doing badly because Ghana has a weak mining revenue management system.
He stressed the fact that Ghana’s mining sector needs a regulatory body like PIAC, which provides checks and balances for the oil & gas sector- generated revenue.
He claimed that “one of the key things PIAC has been able to do for the [oil and gas] sector is that it started with it so all the steps that the oil industry has taken, PIAC have also taken. As old as the mining sector is, we would need a ‘PIAC’ of mining technical people if we want to address the challengeâ€.
Since the passage of the Petroleum Revenue Management Act in 2011, civil society organizations in Ghana have advocated for a comparable Minerals Revenue Management Act for the country’s mining sector.
Ghana’s Petroleum Fund leads in the rankings for transparency and accountability measures as well as contributed significantly to the impressive revenue management score of the oil and gas sector.
Mr Jantuah asserted that government “[needs] to do that for the mining sector because it gives Ghana a lot of revenueâ€.
The Ghanaian Parliament in 2016 passed the mining development fund to provide a legal framework for the equitable distribution of royalties to mining communities for needed development but it has yet to be effectively implemented.