Integrate small businesses into the mining sector - Dr Aubynn

THE Ghana Chamber of Mines (GCM) has called on the government and other stakeholders to help fashion out a strategic policy that will help integrate subsidiary businesses within the country’s mining sector into the economy.

According to the chamber, this will help the country to reap more benefits from the sector while erasing the growing perceptions among the populace that the sector was contributing less to the economic development of the country.

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the chamber, Dr Toni Aubynn, said that to the Daily Graphic in an interview and added that the chamber would be more willing to help in that regard.

Dr Aubynn explained that instead of waiting for mining companies to pay taxes to the government, the business community and the government should fashion out a policy that would help create business opportunities in adjoining areas within the sector.

“The country needs to properly integrate mining into the economy to enable it realise the full benefits of the sector. It is not only through taxes and royalties that we can derive maximum benefits from mining,” he said.

According to Dr Aubynn, a bulk of the mining revenues and expenses goes into the supply chain and contracts awarded by the companies for subsidiary jobs but the country was yet to take advantage of such fall-outs.

The chamber’s call come in the midst of growing resentment among most people, especially persons within mining communities, that the mining sector has contributed little to the economic development of their areas despite enriching mining companies in diverse ways.

        The Chamber of Mines’ CEO said although the country produced rubber in commercial quantities, most mining companies were still faced with the challenge of importing tyres for their heavy duty trucks just because “we do not have a threading company in Ghana to manufacture these tyres.”

Dr Aubynn said that was not good for the country and the economy and pointed out that “if we fashioned out a linkage between mining and the other sectors of the economy, then mining companies would not be sending money outside this country to import these things.”

With gold prices continuing to rally high and demand for other minerals firming up in the mineral market, Dr Aubynn said revenues from the sector to the government could be expected to jump up in 2011 and subsequently do same in 2012.

He lauded the government’s decision to dialogue with the chamber over the newly introduced windfall tax for the sector and the upward adjustment of the corporate tax from 25 per cent to 35 per cent.

The GCM CEO, however, called for a speedy clarification of the modalities involving the calculation of the windfall tax so as to enable the companies plan into the year.

With 2012 being an election year, Dr Aubynn feared the menace of illegal mining (galamsey) could spike and lead to a reduction in the concessions of mining companies.

He thus called on the government and the security agencies to tighten their surveillance against the galamsey phenomenon “since perpetrators of the act have a feeling that the government often gets weak in election periods.”