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Ghana prepares gold board to increase earnings and suppress smuggling

Ghana prepares gold board to increase earnings and suppress smuggling

Ghana prepares to introduce a Gold Board to streamline gold purchases from smallscale miners, increase incomes and decrease smuggling, the west African nation's newly designated finance minister Cassiel Ato Forson stated on Monday.

The Gold Board will allow Africa's leading gold manufacturer to increase its take advantage of the precious metal's sales and aid preserve the national currency's stability.

Data from Ghana's reserve bank showed that total gold exports for 2024 stood at $11.64 billion, a 53.2% year-on-year increase which helped almost double Ghana's trade surplus to $ 4.98 billion in 2024.

The minister said almost $5 billion worth of gold exported in 2015 was from legal small miners.

The time has actually come for Ghana to expand beyond royalties and taxes by utilizing the whole value chain of gold ... from extraction to refinery, worth addition and marketing, both locally and internationally, Forson stated.

The board will be introduced in early March, he included.

The gold programme will be executed with the objective of pursuing the stringent London Bullion Market Association accreditation, which restricts refiners from dealing with gold from sources adding to human rights abuses, dispute, criminal offense or ecological destruction.

Currently, the mayhem in the Ghana's gold purchasing sector prevents the nation from totally taking advantage of its gold resources, Forson stated.

The board will serve as the sole purchaser of gold through licence aggregators and local traders, moving away from the system where Ghanaians and foreign business with export licenses might purchase it without going through the authorized rules.

This fragmented, uncoordinated, and unregulated system has caused a widespread gold smuggling and denied the state of much-needed foreign exchange, Forson said.

(source: Reuters)