Executive Director of Ghana Gold Expo, Steven Blessing Ackah is urging the government to create a Lithium Investment Fund.
According to him, such a fund would enable indigenous Ghanaian companies that have identified lithium resources to conduct exploration programmes.
Speaking on the JoyNews’ AM Show, he mentioned that, this would enable Ghana to maximize its profits and revenue from these resources.
“We are currently asking the government that the government please sit down to speak to the mineral income investment fund because, if you look at the duties and rights of the mineral investment fund, they are supposed to protect the royalty that we have in Ghana.
“We have seen some of the work the mineral income investment fund is doing, but the critical minerals are very crucial because some countries have decided that they are only going to explore by investing money in exploration; however, they are not going to mine the resource itself just because it is more critical. Nobody knows what is going to happen in the future. So, this is where we came in to speak to the government and also to the global front,” Mr Ackah said on March 13, 2024.
The Executive Director mentioned that the government teamed up with a company called Atlantic and a local company.
However, the local company did not do much besides identifying the concession which led to the investor investing more money.
He pointed out that this resulted in the government earning 10%, 20%, and 30%, which he found illogical.
Mr Ackah argued that other countries prioritize equity over royalty, and if the government has chosen to go for 10%, they should promptly address the issues to understand what actually occurred.
“Because the first point is that there is no exploration fund in Ghana for local companies to go into exploration so that they can bid for higher royalties. So, 10% to me is a bit small, and the government could have gone a bit beyond, but the basis of it is that both the government and the local entity did not invest any money in the programme, so the investment company is always going to say that they spent much of the money. If you look at what Atlantic is saying, they have spent more than 100 million dollars to get to this stage even without development, so this is where I think if we want to look at the prosperity and security of our critical minerals.”
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