3 million direct and indirect jobs created in the mining sector-Lands and Natural Resources Minister

Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, Honourable Samuel Abu Jinapor has disclosed that the government of H.E. Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has created a total of three million direct and indirect jobs in the mining sector across the country.

He made the disclosure yesterday, July 2022 at a press conference in Accra indicating how worthwhile in terms of job creation the mining sector has become.

According to him, the sector has retained its position as the leading source of export revenue with export receipts from the sale of minerals reaching about US$7,000,000,000.00 in 2020.

The development in the sector has been grouped under seven headings including local content and Local Participation, improving service delivery, Regulation of small-scale mining, value addition, diversification of mineral resources base, development of mining communities, and Appiatse and its aftermath.

Being one of the policies of the government of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to indigene the mining industry ensuring that Ghanaians participate actively in the industry backed by the 2020 Minerals and Mining (Local Content and Local Participation) Regulation (L.I.2431) to amongst other things promote job creation through the use of local expertise, good,s, and services to achieve what he termed in-country spend for provision of goods and services. He indicated that the law allows the Mineral Commission to reserve certain categories of jobs and the provision of certain goods and services to Ghanaians.

"This year, we increased the procurement list reserved for Ghanaians from 29 to 41 including goods like lubricants, grinding, media, electrical cables, and services like contract mining, drilling services for surface operations, warehousing, freight forwarding, geophysical services, amongst others. "We have also reserved for Ghanaians, a minimum of twenty percent of all insurance and financial services undertaken by mining companies", the Minister said.

"The provision of these goods and services by Ghanaians would ensure that we retain, here in our country, some Two Billion US Dollars (US$2,000,000,000.00) which would have otherwise been exported", he said. He said in addition to those measures, mining companies were required to list on the Stock Exchange.

The minerals commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Ghana Stock Exchange have completed a framework to guide the listing.

He also reported that the minerals commission has undertaken several reforms to improve service delivery in the mining sector. The reforms, he noted include digitization of the records of the commission for prompt application processes for licenses and permits have also been digitalized making it possible to apply from your home and pay via the Ghana.gov platform.

Mr. Jinapor further disclosed that the initiative has drastically cut down the delays in processing applications.

He said the commission is constructing new Regional and District offices to augment service delivery in the regions.

"Two offices in Bibiani and Akim Oda are almost complete, and two Regional offices in Tamale and Kumasi were underway with Wa and Bolga due to commence before the end of the year", Mr. Jinapor said. "Government has also supported the commission with logistics to help it perform its regulatory functions.

These include twenty pickups vehicles, ten blast monitors, one hundred and seven desktop computers, sixty-eight laptops, nineteen printers, eleven photocopier machines, one hundred and two uninterruptible power supply (ups,), five scanners, three projectors, three survey equipment, two plotters and one back up storage device to support the operations of the commission", he stated.

Report by Prosper Kwaku Selassy Agbitor