Developing mining communities: US mining consultant urges government to account for proceeds

A Ghanaian mining consultant based in the United States is calling on the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta to account for the revenue generated from mining activities in Ghana.

He has revealed that proceeds from the mining sector in the country have never been captured in any of the budgets from 2017 to 2022.

Dr. Solomon Owusu, based in Denver, Colorado in an interview with Accra based TV3 on Saturday evening, emphasised that Ghanaian leaders have over the years failed to allocate some of the proceeds from mining to develop the mining towns across the country.

He indicated an amount of Ghc4.172 billion was accrued from mining royalties, cooperate taxes and employee taxes paid by the large-scale mining companies which represented about 65% of mining activities in Ghana in 2020.

"Available data revealed royalties paid by the big mining companies amounted to Ghc1.4 billion, corporate tax accrued was Ghc2.4 billion and employees tax also amounted to Ghc642 million in 2020 alone, without that of small scale miners," he stated.

Dr. Solomon Owusu added that, Newmont Ghana paid about $320 million as corporate tax in 2021 while Goldfields (Tarkwa and Damang) also paid $320 million the same year.

However, Solomon is worried that most communities in mining areas in Ghana are not seeing any development despite the huge sums of money paid to government yearly by mining companies across the country.

"My brother, I can confidently tell you that, Ghana's previous budget statements have never captured proceeds from mining activities as have been done to the oil sector. At least, revenue accrued from the oil sector have been recorded in all the budgets," he intimated.

Dr. Owusu is therefore, urging government to be accountable to Ghanaians on mining proceeds and also proposed for mining communities to be considered in terms of development and livelihood empowerment.

The call for proper and equitable usage of mining proceeds has become critical as many communities have complained of neglect despite being known for their mining history.

Communities in the 14 out of the 16 regions where gold is mined like Obuasi, Tarkwa, Damang, Kenyasi, Abirim, Bogoso, Chirano, Prestea and many others currently lack basic social amenities such as good roads, portable water, schools, health facilities that would make livelihood better for residents.