Invest Mineral Revenue – ACEP

Mohammed Amin Adam

The Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP) has criticized government for failing to invest the country's mineral revenues.

Mohammed Amin Adam, Executive Director of ACEP, indicated that “mineral revenues have been used for consumption rather than investments, resultantly, its contribution to productivity has been limited.”

Speaking at a National Forum on the proposed Mining Revenue Management Law Friday in Accra, he said future generations have no guarantee of benefiting from the mineral revenue since it is being consumed by the present generation.

“This also affects future sustainability. Public financial management is poor as it makes it difficult to track mineral revenues and development projects funded with the revenues. Transparency in the management of mineral revenues is limited to the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) process.

“State institutions that have responsibilities for the management of mineral revenues are not subject to any accountability process.”

Dr Adam stated that the fairness of the formula for sharing benefits has also been contested.

Hannah Owusu Koranteng, Associate Executive Director of Wassa Association of Communities Affected by Mining (WACAM), said the country's natural resource was becoming a curse because the exploration of natural resources had led to increased poverty, conflict, environmental and social problems.

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According to her, mining has done more harm than good because huge farm lands have been destroyed while water bodies were being polluted.

Ghana's three northern regions have the highest incidence of poverty at 80 percent.

The Ghana Chamber of Mines recently advised the government to support a statutory allocation of 30 percent of mining revenues to local communities.

By Samuel Boadi