Day: June 22, 2021

Accra,– The Forestry Industries Association of Ghana (FIAG), a coalition of private operators in the forestry sector, has appealed to government to ensure the rational allocation of resources to make production systems in the sector work efficiently and sustainably.

Dr Kwame Asamoah Adam, the Chief Executive Officer of FIAG, at a media briefing on Tuesday, said some well-endowed companies, which had invested capital in machinery could not operate at even 50 percent capacity currently.

That, he said, was due to the unavailability of forestry materials and other illegal operations such as stealing and selling of forestry resources to countries like Burkina Faso and Mali.

“So we want to see the Government improving the enforcement system that will ensure that the little that we have is available for local processing,” Dr Adam said.

The private forestry sector is said to provide jobs to over 400,000 people in Ghana and generating an annual income of 200 million euros.

The media briefing was to announce the soon to be out-doored Association.

Dr Adam said the operators therefore decided to go under one umbrella to secure the activities of members, ensure the access to finance, and rake in more revenue by using the national resources more sustainably.

He said export declined to about 60 percent from January and June, 2020, due to COVID-19 and were still recovering, hence needed government’s intervention.

Dr Adam said challenges facing the sector included people mining in forest reserves and illegal agricultural production, exacerbating the rate of decline in raw materials.

Also, the ineffective management of timber allocation by the state, resulting in high cost of raw material, the high interest rate on local borrowing making businesses uncompetitive on local and external markets, and bureaucratic bottlenecks were issues affecting the operators.

Those issues were also being compounded by global environmental concerns like global warming and its resultant climate change, which impacted on wood production, he said.

To address those challenges, Mr Adam said the different forestry groupings engaged in tree plantation development, logging, timber milling and processing, and furniture/joinery/cabinet manufacturing, decided to come together two years ago to engage relevant stakeholders to improve their activities.

Other members include those into charcoal production, plant based industrial chemical extraction, canoe carving, wood handicraft production, and timber products trading and marketing.

The members had also partnered with state entities to rehabilitate depleted forest lands through tree planting programmes to sustain their businesses, he said.

Mr Gustav Adu, the Director of Operations, FIAG, said the Association was ready to support government to streamline activities in the sector to make their businesses thrive.

He called for conscious efforts at reviving technical and vocational institutions to train workers in the wood and forestry industry to improve on their skills.

Source: Ghana News Agency

Accra,- The Ghana Mineworkers’ Union has commended government for providing the legislative framework for the sector, but called for its operationalization to address the poor infrastructural development in mining communities.

Ghana has enacted the Mineral Development Fund Act 2016 (Act 912) and set up of the Mineral Development Fund Secretariat, a substantial step towards responding to the deteriorating infrastructure and the glaring infrastructural deficit in mining communities, the Union said.

This was in a statement signed by Mr Abdul-Moomin Gbana, Secretary General of the Union, and copied to the Ghana News Agency in Accra, as part of the Union’s week celebration slated from Monday June 21 to 25 l, 2021.

“We believe that the sliding nature of the mineral royalties’ calculator selectively applied to some mining companies, under the guise of Stability and Development Agreements entered with the government is a regressive fiscal policy decision as far as revenue from mineral royalties is concerned,” he said.

This, he explained, is because the current sliding scale was only a function of gold price and not gold production and that to ensure the full realization of mineral royalties for its intended use under the Mineral Development Fund, it was important to reconsider the use of the sliding scale and apply a flat rate.

He said the Union believed that the current 20 percent share of annual mineral royalties allocated to the Mineral Development Fund was woefully inadequate and ought to be increased to at least 50 percent if the country was committed to seeing the transformation of mining communities as was envisaged in the Mineral Development Fund Act.

“Taking the year 2020 as an example, producing mining companies paid a total of about GH₵4.5 billion direct taxes and about GH₵1.4 billion in mineral royalties to the GRA giving a total direct mineral revenue of about GH₵5.6 billion”.

“Pursuant to Section 3 (a) of the Mineral Development Fund 2016 (Act 912), only 20 percent (GH₵278 million) of the above mineral royalties went to the MDF,” he said.

“The Fund also gave 20 percent (GH₵56 million) of its share of the royalties to the Mining Community Development Scheme set up under it for mining community development, while the rest of the Fund share of royalty funds went to the Office of the Administrator of Stool Lands (50 percent), Minerals Commission (13 percent), Geological Survey Authority (8 percent), Research (5 percent) and Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources (4 percent)”.

He said “in the nutshell, government made only 1 per cent of the huge mineral revenue in 2020 available under its current arrangement for the development of the entire mining communities which was certainly unacceptable.”

The Union advocated a Mining Sector Infrastructure Fund under the Mineral Development Fund when its share of annual mineral royalties was increased to 50 percent as proposed, adding the Mining Sector Infrastructure Fund of 30 percent of annual mineral royalties should focus on addressing the infrastructure gaps of these mining communities on a more sustainable basis.

“We are therefore calling on the Parliamentary Select Committee on Mines and Energy to pay particular attention to the activities and accountabilities of the Mineral Development Fund in order to ensure that mining communities benefit fully from the Fund,” he said.

He called on government to fix the poor road infrastructure in mining communities immediately.

A tour of mining communities in this country reveal one similar and chilling characteristic – wretched and unplanned infrastructure if there ever existed any, huge infrastructural gap, lack of access to potable drinking water, polluted waterbodies and environmental degradation.

He said the resources that continued to fly out of these communities were finite and would be depleted someday, hence needed action to resolve that challenges.

“These mineral revenues were generated from no other place in Ghana but typical mining communities such as Tarkwa, Akyempim, Ayanfuri, Damang, Akyem, Ahafo, Manso Nkran, and Obuasi.

“Despite these revenues from these mining communities and Ghana’s current place as the largest producer of gold in Africa, Ghana continued to experience disappointing results in translating these mineral wealth into broad economic development for the benefit of its citizenry especially mining communities, which were host to these deposits,” he said.

Source: Ghana News Agency

Nsien (W/R),- Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh, the former Minister of Education, has urged Tullow Ghana to adopt Nsien Senior High School (SHS) as a flagship school under its five-year education plan.

The Nsien SHS continue to suffer infrastructure challenges since its establishment some 60 years ago, he said.

The school lacked a good science laboratory, vehicles and burdened with uncompleted school projects.

Dr Prempeh said this at the commissioning of a 16-unit ultramodern Girls Dormitory for the Nsien SHS, constructed by Tullow Ghana.

He said the Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) and the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Agenda of nurturing talents for value and shared prosperity could only be possible through commitment in the education sector.

Tullow is supporting Government’s Free SHS Policy by investing a total of 10 million dollars over five years to provide school infrastructure to 15 senior high schools in the country.

Dr Prempeh, the current Minister of Energy, said Tullow’s investment in education could help the community to produce top managers for the country’s growth in general.

Ms Cynthia Lumor, the Corporate Affairs Manager of Tullow Ghana, said the company believed in shared prosperity, hence the huge investment in the education sector.

“The development of education in Ghana has been central to Tullow Ghana’s effort since its operations commenced and remains focused as we implement our 10- year value maximization plan,” she said.

Awulae Agyefi Kwame, the Omanhene of the Nsien Traditional Area, gave the history of the school and the need for stakeholders to support it to grow.

He mentioned the educational development policy in the then President Nkrumah’s era, which gave birth to the school, and the many transformation it had undergone to its present state.

Mr Kwabena Okyere Darko-Mensah, the Western Regional Minster, commended President Akufo-Addo for his bold decision and the efforts of the former Minister of Education, Dr Opoku Prempeh, to see to the fruition of the Free SHS Policy, which had seen many in school today.

In the Western Region alone, enrolment had increased from 13,000 to 27,000 with 70 percent increment in students in boarding houses, he said.

Mr Darko-Mensah said economic prosperity hinged on quality education and appreciated the commitment of partners like Tullow to improve upon the sector.

Source: Ghana News Agency