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Report by Edward FRIMPONG
The Advisor on Mining to the Minister, Mr. Benjamin Aryee, has touted Government’s active broad stakeholder engagement in advancement of the realization of some policy objectives in prospective of Ghana’s critical minerals.
Contributing to a panel discussion on the theme “Advancing Critical Mineral Supply Chains” at the ongoing MinExpo International at Las Vegas, Nevada, Mr. Aryee asserted that Ghana has a long history of Mining, spanning over a century, especially of gold, but also diamonds, manganese and bauxite, along with other industrial minerals for local use; the sector is an important contributor to GDP, Foreign Exchange earnings and Government fiscal revenues.
He noted that, the sector has operated a ‘Dig & Ship’ model linked predominantly with external economies, with virtually no value addition or interface with other sectors locally thereby losing out on potential additional value through leakages out of the economy.
He revealed that beyond Government’s 2-pronged Broad Mineral Policy Framework (which aligns with the AMV) of:
i) Diversification of the country’s Mineral Resource base, to the extent that can be viably & responsibly mined; &
ii) Locally developing the full extent of the Value Chain for each Mineral, to the maximum extent possible, Government has, set up dedicated agencies, the Ghana Integrated Aluminium Development Corporation (GIADEC) and the Ghana Integrated Iron and Steel Development Corporation (GIISDEC), to actively facilitate the local development of the value chains of, notably, the bauxite-aluminium and iron & steel subsectors, respectively.
He indicated that a notable development in this respect is the commitment of the current owners of the manganese mine (operated since 1916) to build a four hundred & fifty million US dollar (USD450 million) refinery to upgrade manganese content of its output from 27 to 40%.
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