The Co-Chair of the Ghana Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative(GEITI), Dr. Steve Manteaw is hopeful any regulation aimed at checking the real quantity of gold exported will block leakages in the system used in sending the commodity out of the country.
According to him, available records show that there is always a contradiction in the quantity of gold that leaves the country and the real amount that are received by the importing countries.
His comments follow an announcement by Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia to pass a regulation to critically examine gold and oil exports.
The vice president disclosed that a recent visit to Saudi Arabia showed that gold received by the Middle East country was more than what was recorded by Ghana.
Speaking to Citi Business News on the issue, Dr. Steve Manteaw maintained that the issue is not new, but must be addressed immediately to save the country from losing more money.
Dr. Manteaw recounted a similar story where a Swiss Ambassador to Ghana gave figures that contradicted what Ghana has recorded for gold exports to the country.
“What gives us the clearest indication is that, we need to do something about it. The information shared by a Swiss Ambassador sometime during the latter part of 2016 when he indicated that Switzerland as country imported gold worth 2 billion dollars from Ghana in 2016 showed that, on the contrary, Ghana recorded less than the figure,” he said.
He stated that the figure was revealing since revenue from gold to Switzerland couldn’t have hit the said amount.
“If you check our gold export figures we were nowhere near 2 billion dollars. So if the ambassador of Switzerland indicates that we are importing gold worth 2 billion dollars, that tells me that some of our gold is out there through unapproved means and that we are capturing our gold production data inadequately,” he remarked.
Dr. Manteaw applauded government’s decision to come out with a new regulation to police the export of the commodity to give Ghana the maximum returns from the natural resource.
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By: Lawrence Segbefia/citibusinessnews.com/Ghana
