The Executive Directo of Africa Centre for Energy, Benjamin Boakye has said that, they as a CSO need to be able to convince Ghanaians that they are valuing the assets right with regards to the Agyapa deal.
Speaking during a virtual townhall meeting held by IMANI Ghana, he made this statement adding that, they valuing the assets right will help bring understanding on what is going into the deal and for Ghanaians to have a fair assessment of what is granting to Agyapa.
“That also helps you to understand what the market is offering because, if you know how much your asset is worth, then you can decide that, the market is not giving me a fair value, but, if you put it 1 billion when the market gives you 2 billion you may be in a hurry to accept the 2 billion, but that may not even be a fair value of the asset you are granting the market.”
He added that they appreciate the duration government is using with regards to the deal.
Speaking on the position of the CSOs, he said that, what they are trying to do is to listen on what is missing and what other perspective people have.
‘” What we are trying to do as a civil society is that, we are trying to see how this agreement really optimizes Ghana’s royalties share from gold production and see whether the interest of the country is protected.
“Time and again when you read the agreement and you look at the conversation that are happening, you get increasingly convinced that, we could be better off taking a step back to consider other options perhaps on how to optimize the royalties.”
Touching on some broad governance questions, he said, when you look at the agreement, the first thing that comes up is the number of leases and the projects that have been assigned to Agyapa.
He added that,
“Initially governments position was that, they were only giving in 12 projects to the deal and therefore there are other leases that are not covered in the agreement but when we started punching holes and emphasizing what is stated in the agreement, I think the conversation has slowed on that part but it’s important for us to keep hammering that. So, Ghana is granting 48 leases that essentially assigns geographic demarcations through the transaction but on those leases are 12 companies producing and others preparing to produce. There could be many projects on these leases that could increase reserves and output from those leases.”
He revealed that, Agyapa is also granted first right of refusal for any lease that will want to go the same path of royalty transaction.
“So, if any decides to go down the company’s lease, the system has been crafted such that Agyapa will have to be considered first. What is even much more worrying is that, in considering Agyapa for other leases, the stabilizes all the terms of the Agyapa we have today for future transactions. So, every lease that you assign to Agyapa which they have the right to refuse, it has to be identical to what we are signing today.”
Touching on evaluation, he said, it is important for government to come clean on how they got the 1billion dollar transaction.
“We need the variables. We need to be able to within the context of all the technical issues in the deal, to be able to be sure that government is taking right step that, that government understands how the industry functions.”
