Gov’t underreporting mining revenue received in 2019 - CSOs
Adnan Adams Mohammed
Government has been accused of deliberately under-reporting
the revenues it received from mining companies in last year just to support the
valuation of the Agyapa Royalties deal at US$1.0 billion.
The group of about 22 Civil Society Organisations (CSOs),
calling itself ‘Alliance of CSOs working on Extractives, Anti-Corruption, and
Good Governance’ at a press briefing in Accra yesterday claimed that, government
reported Ghana’s gold royalties last year to be US$123 million during a meeting
with them , but from their independent checks the figure was rather US$200
million.
Apart from the accusation of under-reporting the country’s
earnings from gold royalties, they said, government is also hampering access to
the information on the deal. Interestingly, through government’s communication
it is evident that it is either not paying attention to the revenue flows in
the sector, or deliberately undervaluing the assets for unknown reasons.
“When a direct question was posed to the Deputy Minister of
Finance on the amount of royalties received from gold in 2019, he said Ghana
received about GH¢650 million ($123 million), the spokesperson for the CSOs
Alliance, Dr Steve Manteaw lamented.
The Co-Chair of Ghana Extractive Industry Transparency
Initiative (GHEITI) disclosed further that, “The truth is that Ghana received GH¢1.06
billion ($200 million) from the big companies under the Chamber of Mines alone.
Government has data on the other receipts, yet it decided to under-report the
numbers.
“Again, in our meeting with the Finance Ministry, we were
given half-year receipts for 2019 of $72 million (¢366 million). The
underreporting of the 2019 revenue which is the most significant period for
revenue projection and emphasis on old royalty numbers is intriguing,” Dr
Manteaw added.
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