- Local Gold Refining Must Compete on Cost, Not Regulation Alone — Chamber of Mines
Ghana’s push to capture more value from its gold wealth is confronting a critical commercial test, with the mining industry warning that mandatory domestic refining could fall short of its broader economic objectives unless the government helps reduce taxes, electricity costs and other structural expenses facing local refineries.
The Ghana Chamber of Mines is calling for a burden-sharing arrangement between the state, mining companies and refinery operators as Ghana moves towards restricting exports of unrefined gold and building a domestic refining industry capable of competing with established international centres.
Dr Ken Ashigbey, Chief Executive Officer of the Chamber, said government intervention would be necessary if domestic refining is to remain commercially attractive.
“Government needs to put its skin in the game,” he said.
The debate comes ahead of an important change in Ghana’s gold-export regime. From September 1, 2026, the Ghana Gold Board, GoldBod, will require Self-Financing Aggregators to refine gold doré domestically before export. Under the framework, unrefined doré will no longer receive export approval, while refining costs will be borne by aggregators or their approved offtakers.
The policy represents one of Ghana’s clearest attempts to move beyond its traditional role as an exporter of minimally processed mineral resources. But it also exposes a longstanding challenge in industrial policy: requiring domestic value addition does not automatically make local processing internationally competitive.
For Ghana, the potential economic benefits are considerable.
Processing more gold locally could retain refining margins within the economy, create specialised jobs, deepen technical expertise and generate demand for associated services including assaying, logistics, security and financial services. Over time, internationally recognised refining capacity could also strengthen Ghana’s ambition to become a regional precious-metals hub. Those benefits, however, will depend heavily on cost competitiveness.
Dr Ashigbey argued that the additional costs associated with local content and beneficiation cannot simply be passed on indefinitely to mining companies and traders.
“The more we do in this country, and the more we all work together, government needs to put its skin in the game,” he said.
Taxes and levies are among the areas where industry expects intervention.
“The issue, of course, is that it is coming from the taxes and the levies that are on; government would have to look at that, and I know that conversation is going on,” he said.
The concern is particularly important because gold-refining margins can be relatively thin.
If taxes, imported chemicals, waste treatment, energy and other operating costs make Ghana materially more expensive than competing refining jurisdictions, compulsory domestic processing could add costs to the supply chain without producing the scale and efficiency required to build a sustainable industry.
The Chamber is, however, also challenging private refinery operators to improve productivity.
“The issues of these private sector people who own the refineries in terms of the technology that they need to put in to be able to ensure that they reduce their cost, it’s something that we need to do,” Dr Ashigbey said.
The emerging position is therefore a two-sided adjustment: government reducing policy-induced costs while private operators invest in technology, efficiency and sufficient processing capacity.
“The issues of even power, you know, currently the cost of power, so there might be some policy decisions that would have to be taken,” Dr Ashigbey said.
He suggested that strategically important refineries could be given greater access to lower-cost hydroelectricity.
“Because of the criticality of refineries, is it possible that in the energy mix, we will give them, you know, a lot more of the hydro that is cheaper?”
Such an intervention would amount to an explicit industrial-policy choice: accepting lower margins from electricity supply to one category of user in return for the potential economic gains from processing more minerals domestically.
The policy challenge would be ensuring that any preferential tariff is transparent, targeted and linked to measurable investment, production, employment and export commitments.
Dr Ashigbey also pointed to proposed renewable-energy investments associated with the 24-hour economy programme as a possible source of cheaper industrial power.
He said discussions around large-scale solar generation contemplated electricity costs of about US$0.03 to US$0.04 per kilowatt-hour, which could materially alter the economics of local refining if achieved.
The bigger test, however, will be whether Ghana can build refineries with sufficient scale and international recognition to attract gold beyond the domestic market.
The Chamber has previously argued that Ghana should think regionally about refining, an approach that could prove crucial to achieving economies of scale.
A refinery dependent only on Ghanaian output may face a very different cost structure from one capable of attracting doré from neighbouring West African producers.
That distinction could determine whether Ghana’s strategy becomes a protected domestic-processing programme or develops into a competitive export-services industry.
The immediate concern for miners is ensuring that beneficiation does not undermine the competitiveness of the wider gold sector.
“So I think that this issue of beneficiation is a good thing for us, and, you know, all of us need to chip in,” Dr Ashigbey said.
“But it has to be done collaboratively. Government need to embrace industry to all work together so that we all can reduce the cost of doing this, because we’re looking at the issues of value.”
The Chamber also argues that large-scale miners are already absorbing additional costs associated with government’s broader gold-sector strategy, including the Ghana Accelerated National Reserve Accumulation Programme.
Dr Ashigbey said the pricing structure under that arrangement meant miners were already providing an element of subsidy to government, adding to the case for sharing the financial burden of domestic beneficiation.
Ghana’s refining experiment will therefore be judged by more than whether gold is physically processed within the country.
Its success will depend on whether domestic refineries can become efficient enough to compete without requiring permanent regulatory protection.
If tax relief, competitive electricity, modern refining technology and sufficient throughput can be combined, the September requirement could mark an important structural shift in Ghana’s mineral economy from exporting raw value to retaining more of it domestically.
If local costs remain structurally higher than international alternatives, however, mandatory refining risks becoming another charge embedded in the gold supply chain rather than the foundation of a globally competitive industry.
The economics of beneficiation will ultimately determine the outcome. Ghana can mandate where gold is refined. The harder task is ensuring that refiners operating in Ghana become competitive enough that regulation is no longer the principal reason the gold stays.
