CSOs advocate new clauses in mining, oil and gas law
Civil society organisations (CSOs) are advocating the Free Prior Informed Consent (FPIC) clauses to be incorporated into Ghana’s mining, oil and gas laws to protect frontline communities from the many violations they suffer in their extractive activities.
They argued that FPIC will also equip the communities to protect their rights to ownership of land and rights to livelihood prior to the granting of rights to extractive companies.
A representative of the CSO constituency of the Ghana Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (GHEITI), Mrs Hannah Owusu-Koranteng, who spoke at the launch of the GHEITI 2014 reports in Accra, said transparency was not only about financial disclosure but involved all the principles for good governance, including the right to decide from contracting to mine decommissioning and mine closure.
She said the nation had not been able to draw a balance between the benefits and costs associated with mineral exploration.
“The government must commission a cost-benefit study of mining which takes into account the environmental, social and economic cost of mining for proper assessment of benefits of mining to our nation and develop mechanisms that would ensure that companies internalise the environmental and social cost of mining in their investment plans and not to externalise such costs to society,” she said.
A deputy Minister of Finance, Mrs Mona Quartey, in a speech read on her behalf, said the contribution of the mining, oil and gas sector to total tax revenues had been declining from 27 per cent in 2012 to 19 per cent in 2013 and to 16 per cent in 2014 due to the fall in international prices of gold.
She said total revenue accrued in the mining sector in 2012 was GH¢1,461,202,977, GH1, 104,047,314 and GH¢1,192,692,542, with total Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) into the minerals and mining sector from 1983 to 2014 amounting to about US$14.65 billion.
“In the face of declining international commodity prices, the government is working assiduously to ensure that the revenues from our extractive resources are prudently managed and utilised for the benefit of our people, especially those immediately and negatively impacted by the activities of extractive sector companies,” she said.
The co-chair of GHEITI, Dr Steve Manteaw, said the 2014 report was being launched at a crucial time when Ghana had been acknowledged globally for her achievements.
However, he indicated that the country also had the hurdle of validation to cross.
Ghana has been penciled down to be among the first few countries to undergo validation under the EITI standard and so the work ahead is still arduous. We need to put in the necessary resources and commit our time and effort to ensure we do not fail with validation after we have been acknowledged for being a star performer.
“There are issues that currently are not within the purview of Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) and we look forward to that day when we shall have full transparency in terms of the social and environmental cost of natural resource extraction. But until we begin to account for these costs, the puzzle that EITI seeks to resolve will still be missing,” he said.