The CEO of Chamber of Mines, Sulemanu Koney has urged government to leverage on the value chain that the mining industry provides aside the revenue it generates for Ghana.
Ghana has over the years focused on revenue that the mining industry generates when it can also benefit from the competitive advantage of the mining value chain.
In a media interaction on Monday in Accra, Sulemanu Koney said “The conversation about mining needs to change. Don’t focus too much about the revenue. Of course it is important, but the real value is within the value chain. One of the major challenges of resource countries in Africa has been our bane of just focusing on revenue, where the large chunk of the value leaves our shores.”
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Ghana is one of the leading exporters of gold in West Africa, but they are in their natural state with no added value.
Koney said that the Chamber is doing its best but acknowledged that more needs to be done to explore the opportunities of the value chain within the mining sector.
He noted that it is important to understand what it means for Ghana to have mineral resources and find ways of relating the various minerals among themselves and the economy.
We don’t support our natural resources as we’ve been saying. We are quite emotive about the issues around mining rather than sitting back and say lets understand the whole value chain of the mining industry, so we called on the University of Mines to do a mapping of opportunities around the mining industry,” Koney said.
He also added that the mapping information is important for the formulation of government policies around mining, and will help the Chamber showcase to everyone interested in the opportunities in the mining industry.
Source: Fauzeeya Jamal-deen