Mining law to be revised soon

The Government would soon submit to Parliament for approval revised legal and fiscal regimes to govern mining operations in the country to promote international competitiveness, Mr Kwadjo Adjei-Darko, Minister of Mines said on Wednesday.

Delivering the keynote address at the opening of the West African Mining and Power Conference in Accra, Mr Adjei-Darko said after successfully implementing the current mineral code for over a decade there was the urgent need to review and re-align it to attract investment into the sector.

In this connection, he said, the Attorney - General and Minister of Justice was currently considering the revised Minerals and Mining law and the relevant draft legislation to place before Cabinet. The Minister said attracting investment capital inflows, remaining competitive and ensuring sustainable mining practice were some of the challenges facing the sector.

He said government had adopted the Alternative Livelihood Approach to local economic development so that communities in which mining activities were located could be assisted to derive benefits from investments so that their towns did not become ghost towns when operations were stalled. Mining companies were also equally being encouraged to provide relevant skilled training to employees.

The Minister said for the countries in the Sub-Region to derive full benefits of investments in the mining sector, it was necessary to resource and to equip the monitoring and regulatory institutions.

He appealed to bilateral and multilateral agencies to support the institutions to collect store and present the geological and mining information in forms for investment promotion as well as offer training to personnel to enhance their supervisory capacity to make for orderly development of mineral resources. "Geological data should be packaged in a way to attract investor interest or for actual sale to increase equity," he said.

Mr Adjei-Darko asked governments in the Sub-Region to encourage cross-border mineral exploitation and programmes and information sharing to maximise returns on mineral resources and operations. They should equally adopt common mineral policy programmes to enable them to add value to some of the commodities.

Mr James Anaman, President of the Ghana Chamber of Mines, said although African government had responded well to the legislative challenge, how to ensure that all governmental agencies and ministries did not negate what was enshrined in the law through independence of thought and action, was lacking. This, he said, sometimes subverted the incentives regimes guaranteed to the sector.

Mr Anaman cited junior companies engaged in exploration as particularly susceptible to "the capriciousness of this sort of juggling," adding that such practices endangered the development of the sector.