Chief Executive Officer of the Minerals Income Investment Fund (MIIF) Yaw Baah, has disclosed that the Fund is on the path to attaining the desired purpose for which it was set up.
According to him, efforts are being made in realizing significant increase in local investments. This, he explains, includes 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”.
Ensuring the nation achieves its objectives
Mr Baah made this revelation at a public forum organized at the Institute of Statistical Social and Economic Research (ISSER).
He further explained that, the Fund is well on its path in ensuring that Ghana’s mineral royalties are properly managed.
Additionally, he underscored the need to ensure the mineral royalties are beneficial to Ghanaians
“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 is to ensure that the nation achieves its objectives.”
Monetizing gold
On his part, the Founder of Songhai Group, Hene Aku Kwapong, revealed that the country may miss out on the prospects of monetizing gold.
Despite Ghana leading other countries such as South Africa in the production of gold, he revealed that, the country may not enjoy the full benefit of the deal.
He further noted that, this will leave the country with negligible or little gold value. Mr. Kwapong believes that this will put the country in a poor state if our natural resources are not monetized.
“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.
“There are several opportunities in Agyapa. Agyapa is fine but how do we do it to generate trust in our own people so that they believe we are doing the right thing. There should be a full strategy to provide clarity. It is critical that we come out with a plan, how much it will cost so when we begin the monetization, we know how much we are going to get”.
The Minerals Income Investment Act, was passed in 2018 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.
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