The Co-Chair of the Ghana Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (GHEITI), Dr Stephen Manteaw, is calling for a legislation to curtail the exportation of Ghana’s critical minerals like manganese, bauxite, lithium among others in its raw form.
According to him, the country’s vision of setting up a steel industry would be in great danger if the country continued to export these critical minerals to other countries.
He added that when these minerals got depleted the country would have to import, for instance manganese and bauxite which were key raw materials for the steel industry.
“The move away from fossil fuel as the dominant sources of energy to renewable, as a result of this, there is growing demand for minerals like lithium, manganese, nickel, iron graphite and bauxite that will be required to generate renewable energy.
“As demand grows chances are that they would appreciate in value over and above our traditional mineral like gold, hence the need to develop policies and framework to regulate it for the benefit of the state,” Dr Manteaw stated.
He noted that the Ghana Integrated Iron and Steel Development Company would collapse if manganese and bauxite which were critical raw materials for its sustainability continued to be exported.
Dr Manteaw made these suggestions at a two-day training workshop for journalists to discuss the 2020 GHEITI reports on mining and oil/gas at Aburi in the Eastern Region on Saturday.
The training workshop organised by GHEITI was sponsored by the GIZ (German Development Cooperation) and the Ministry of Finance.
The GHEITI Co-Chair expressed concern about the lack of vision around what role the country expects “from our critical mineral endowment to play in our development trajectory.”
According to him Ghana must position itself to benefit from the discovery of these critical minerals by setting up value addition factories and enterprises to enable the state to generate revenues in the form of taxes as well as diversify the economy away from our dependent on mining.
“So far as these critical minerals can be depleted we need to be mindful that we are able to put the expected revenue to uses that would ensure the country continues to benefits from their extraction beyond the mine closure,” he noted.
He said, for instance the Arab states had been able to use revenues from oil to develop tourism infrastructure which had made it possible for them not to depend only on oil should it get depleted someday.
FROM DANIEL DZIRASAH, ABURI