Chief Executive Officer of the Minerals Income Investment Fund (MIIF), Yaw Baah, says the fund has made significant strides in achieving the objectives for which it was set up.
Adding plans are far advanced towards increasing local investments in the management of the country’s gold assets to maximize value.
“MIIF is on the path to achieving the objectives envisaged under the Act. Per this very Act, one of the objectives of the MIIF and going by the wise words of the President is that Ghana has reached a stage that there must be the need to encourage indigenous companies in this area”, Yaw Baah asserted at the ‘Monetization of Minerals Royalties’ Forum held on Monday.
The public event was organized at the Institute of Statistical Social and Economic Research (ISSER) of the University of Ghana on Monday, May 3, 2021.
Speaking further at the forum, Mr Baah stated that his outfit is positioning itself to change the public narrative by ensuring that Ghana’s mineral royalties are managed properly to the maximum benefit of the ordinary citizen.
“Ghana, we do well everywhere, but it appears all our gold is foreign-owned. We continue to sit on money because apart from the gold, we have other minerals of which we at MIIF are working to propel and push this to ensure that the nation achieves its objectives.”
Also present at the program were the Founder of Songhai Group, Hene Aku Kwapong, and the Director in charge of Banks, Investors, and Intermediaries at Standard Chartered Bank, Carl Odame-Gyenti.
Hene Aku Kwapong expressed fears Ghana may not able to raise future revenue from gold production if steps are not taken to monetize the mineral resource as a long-term venture.
He said although Ghana has overtaken countries such as South Africa in the production of gold, the West African country may not enjoy the full benefit mining companies from the Southern part of Africa are at the core of the mining business in Ghana with the proceeds being sent back to their home country.
The development he explains will leave Ghana with little to no gold value thereby putting the country in a rather sorry state at least in the next five decades if a special purpose vehicle is not established to monetize the natural resource.
“Ghana is now the leading producer of gold. We have passed South Africa and other African countries which is great. But 50 years from now my biggest concern is, if we do not take care we actually may not have the opportunity to even make money from gold, because others would have monetized it, and they would have had a lot of resources left-back in their country”, he said.
The Minerals Income Investment Act, passed in 2018 was to among other things monetise the country’s mineral resources for the government’s infrastructural development.
It is also to monetize the minerals’ income accruing to the country, develop and implement measures to reduce the budgetary exposure of Ghana to minerals income fluctuations.
