MINING: NPP Provides No Hope

Dr Mahamudu Bawumia

By Duke Tagoe

The strategy adopted by the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) to manage the mining sector in the event that it wins political power does not resolve the problem of why Ghana gains so little from the mining industry.

In fact, the approach of the NPP can be likened to an ostrich that buries its head into a pit of sand in the hope that it has achieved invincibility from the human eye.

Addressing a crowd of supporters at the Manifesto launch of the NPP at the Trade Fair Centre in Accra, Mahamudu Bawumia, the Vice Presidential Candidate of the NPP, revealed that all his party intends to do if it should get anywhere close to power is to increase the quota of the share of royalties allocated to mining communities by 10 percent.

Royalties are payments made by multinational mining companies to the government as the owner of the land on which a mineral is found. Currently out of the amount received by government in royalties, 10 percent of that is allocated to the mining communities and it is that figure Bawumia and his government intend to increase to 20 percent.

Unfortunately, this piecemeal approach can only be described as cowardice and an insult to the people of Ghana who demand collective ownership of all mineral resources of gold, diamond, salt, manganese, timber, bauxite and the crude oil that is being exploited in the Jubilee and in the newly commissioned Tweneboa, Enyera and Ntomme (TEN) fields.

Available statistics from the project partners indicate that the total amount of crude oilheld in the TEN fields is estimated at300 million barrels with 80 percent oil and 20 percent gas with the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) as the least shareholder of 15 percent.

But what did Bawumia really meant when he said: “We will generate resources locally to develop the country” and he needs to explain that because how does a government of the NPP expect to generate those resources when the economic policy of the NPP is that government must not be engaged in production having pursued a vicious programme that ensured thatevery economic activity under the Kufuor administration in which Akufo Addo served in different capacities, was passed on to the bosom of the private sector?

In fact, when the Kufuor government decided to sell the only state owned telecommunication company, Ghana Telecom, in order to pluck a whole in the budget, it was Nana Addo Danquah Akufo Addo who first suggested that if Ghanaians could not raise the money to buy the company, then private business men from abroad must be allowed to take over.

How much do we really receive in royalty payments and how does Dr. Bawumia and his party intends to develop Ghana from the royalty payments from Newmont, Tullow, Kosmos and Anadarko? And what is it that does not enable Bawumia and his party to propose the increase in the share of the state in our mineral resources and the establishment of a State Mining Company?

Ghanaians do not want royalties from their mineral resources. They want to take over the mining industry in order to create a great nation devoid of joblessness, poverty, and everything that defines a third world state.

The only solution to the myriads of challenges that confronts Ghana today is not merely the change in government but a change from the neo-liberal policies that only seeks to stifle the progress of Ghana andmake it a reservoir for the production of raw materials for the industries in the metropolitan areas of the world.

By Bawumia’s words, every Ghanaian who genuinely seeks genuine change cannot find any semblance of hope in the New Patriotic Party!

Editorial

VENEZUELA!

The people of Venezuela have every right to complain about the economic hardship they face as a direct result of the inability of the Maduro government to effectively counter the imperialist offensive led by the United State of America.

Indeed, it is even within their rights to work for a change of government in Venezuela.

What is clearly unacceptable is the interference of the west led by the United States of America in what is by all standards the internal affairs of a sovereign state.

The US and its allies are not looking for changes in Venezuela which would improve the conditions of life of the people.

They seek change which will enable the imperialist forces to control the destiny of the Venezuelan people.

They want to make Venezuela another Ghana after the 1966 coup or Chile after the overthrown of the Allende government and that is why we express solidarity with the Maduro Government and the progressive people of Venezuela.