Executive Director for the Integrated Social Development Centre (ISODEC), Dr Steve Manteaw, has said Ghana stands the chance of having a better governed and more rewarding mining sector if it keeps faith with commitments made under various multilateral protocols targeted at the sector.
Dr Manteaw who is a past chairman of the Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC), posits that government despite having access to various reports on the sector providing lessons for putting together a petroleum management framework that is the envy of fellow African nations and rivals any in the world (An instance is the GHEITI mining sector report), government has however, not found it necessary to correct mistakes in the mining sector, that guided the fashioning out of the petroleum sector framework by GHEITI.
Adding government continues to make use of its weak mining sector governance framework.
According to Dr Manteaw, government’s weak governance framework emboldened by the Minerals and Mining Act (2006), the Ghana Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy (GPRSII), the Better Ghana Agenda, among others, has no properly articulated national vision, Illogical sequencing of the legal and policy frameworks and over-generous incentive regime which deprives the state of a fair share of revenues to finance development programmes.
Speaking at the Virtual National Dialogue on Extractive Governance themed; Towards a Sustainable Future for Extractive Governance in Ghana – Interrogating Past Reforms for Exploring New Policy Directions, he pointed out that some lingering challenges of the current policy framework include;
- Absence of a cost-benefit analysis of tax exemptions to inform policy.
- Substantial gaps in the implementation of the MDF – No regulations, No guidelines on utilization.
- Absence of a national audit and mapping of the countries mineral endowment in terms of their quantity, quality, and rate of depletion;
- Poor spatial planning leading to inefficient allocation of mineral rights.
- While some progress is being made on backward linkages through procurement of inputs, personnel, and services locally, forward linkages in terms value addition are weak.
- Even though industrial minerals like salt, limestone and clay have the potential for catalysing industrialisation, the country has no such plan or strategy to add value to these.
Concluding his presentation at the national dialogue, Mr Manteaw asserted that government, aside having a relook of at the petroleum management framework fashioned by the Ghana Extractive Industries and Transparency Initiative (GHEITI) and those of other CSOs, should review the Minerals and Mining Act (2006) to align it with the Minerals and Mining Policy (2014), and also have an overarching frame work for managing mineral royalties.
