MINING HAS BEEN A BLESSING (Pg 28) 18-05-09

Story: Kofi Yeboah
THE Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Chamber of Mines, Ms Joyce Aryee, has described mining in the country as a blessing rather than a curse to the nation.
She said in most places, like Ghana, mining had been the fulcrum of development: "Life without mining is impossible because everything of life is made of minerals. Life depends on minerals and metals and so mining is very important to life sustenance".
From vehicles, medical equipment, computers, printing machines and tiles, to streets, electricity, terrazzo, tiles and farming implements, Ms Aryee gave an endless list of the benefits of mining to buttress her contention that life could not be possible without mining.
Her comments, made in an interview with the Daily Graphic on Tuesday, are a sharp rebuttal of criticisms by a section of the public, particularly environmental activists, that mining has been more of a curse than a blessing to the nation.
The age-old debate on the cost-benefit of mining in Ghana was re-ignited this week in the Daily Graphic with calls for a national forum to discuss the future of the industry.
Welcoming that call, Ms Aryee said the relevance of mining to national development was unquestionable, but the important issue Ghanaians ought to consider now was how best to derive optimum benefit from mining, instead of denigrating the industry.
She said if mining was bad, as some people wanted to suggest, past and present governments would not have deliberately promoted the industry.
"As for mining, it will not stop because human beings depend on metals. How do you stop making cement, terrazzo, iron rods and tiles? You can’t", she maintained.
Ms Aryee said the issue was not about whether mining was worthwhile or not but how mining companies could be regulated to ensure that their operations had minimal impact on the environment.
She said every human activity, such as building and road construction, impacted negatively on the environment but it was important to minimise the impact, adding, "We too are using best practices to minimise the inevitable impact of this economic activity".
"If you ask whether we are fulfilling our environmental obligations, I’ll say yes, but if you ask whether we have reached perfection, I’ll say no; but we are regulated by the EPA", Ms Aryee remarked.
She said the chamber subscribed to international standards such as the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI) and the International Council of Minerals and Metals Standards.
Ms Aryee said social, regulatory and legal issues pertaining to mining were determined by the state, pointing out that mining companies only operated within the established laws.
She said currently, the law in Ghana indicated that minerals belonged to the state and were held in trust by the President, but the challenge lay in how best to ensure that those who ceded their land "are handled in a way that does not create destitution".
Ms Aryee catalogued the benefits of mining to the nation as including the development of human resource through educational infrastructure built by mining companies, with the University of Mines and Technology, Tarkwa, being the most prominent.
She said the sector had also been a major source of revenue generation for the government, contributing a great deal to the gross foreign exchange earnings since the advent of the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) in 1983.
The industry’s contribution to the macro economy in 2008 includes; 43.7 per cent of gross foreign exchange earnings; 14.72 per cent of IRS collections (third highest sector); 13.25 per cent of corporate tax (third highest sector); the return of 63 per cent of mineral revenue to the country and the creation of 12,601 jobs.
The sector also made voluntary contributions of more than $12.4 million to support education, healthcare, electricity, sanitation, water and other development projects. Furthermore, it paid about $6.2 million in respect of royalties to district assemblies, stools and traditional authorities, while property rate of more than $901,000 was paid to the assemblies.
Ms Aryee defended her suggestion for the promotion of mining as the growth pole of the economy because the industry served as a catalyst for the growth of other sectors of the economy.
She cited the springing up of banks in Tarkwa, and added that the 11 banks currently operating in the town as a result of the mining activity there could also be a source of financing for small and medium-scale enterprises, whose impact would trickle down to other sectors.
Ms Aryee said there was the need for legislation and policy to mainstream mining into the national economy.
She dismissed as baseless, the comparison often made about the huge development gap between mining towns in Ghana like Tarkwa and Obuasi, and Johannesburg in South Africa.
According to her, the difference between the mining towns in Ghana and Johannesburg was that the former were not well-planned like the latter, and suggested the need to re-plan mining communities in Ghana to facilitate their massive development.
Ms Aryee said contrary to assertions made by some environmental activists, mining companies were not so powerful as to twist the arm of government because they (companies) believed in compliance and standards.
"We cannot rail-roll government to do our bidding. It would not even help us", she emphasised.