Stanbic Bank reiterates commitment to supporting mining sector
Stanbic Bank Ghana has pledged its commitment to continue to support the mining sector to help it thrive and grow to accelerate the socio-economic development of the country.
Head of Mining and Metals of Stanbic Bank, Lorraine Mac-Pods, who disclosed this in an interview with the Ghanaian Times on Friday on the sidelines of the 5th and 2023 Mining and Energy Summit in Accra, said mining remained a priority to Stanbic Bank Ghana.
Ms Mac-Pods said Stanbic Bank Ghana for the five years had allocated more than $800 million to support the mining sector.
The Head of Mining and Metals said the monies were allocated to mining companies to procure machinery and equipment for their production process.
She said Stanbic Bank was coming from South Africa, where mining played a leading role to the fiscal receipt and development of the country and that was the reason why mining remained a critical sector to the Bank.
The Head of Mining and Metals of Stanbic stressed that mining also remained a crucial sector to the development of Ghana and contributed substantially to the tax revenue of the country.
She, for example, said gold contributed enormously to the country’s export earnings and foreign exchange and that emphasised the need for the sector to be supported to churn out more gold to boost the country’s foreign exchange earnings and revenue.
“Stanbic Bank will continue to assess the opportunities in the mining sector and provide financial resources to meet those needs,” Ms Mac-Pods, stated when quizzed about whether Stanbic Bank would continue to support the sector.
The 5th Mining and Energy Summit organised by the Ghana Chamber of Mines was on the theme “Harnessing Mining and Energy Potential for Sustainable National Development.”
Ghana has regained its position as the largest gold producer in Africa after increasing its gold production by 32 per cent to 3.74 million ounces in 2022 from 2.82 million ounces in 2021.
The Head of Mining and Mining said the Stanbic Bank continued to support the Ghana Mining and Energy Summit because of the importance the Bank attached to the sector.
She stressed that as part of the local content agenda of the government, an enabling environment should be created for the start-ups in the mining sector to produce mining inputs locally.
BY KINGSLEY ASARE