CDD-Ghana Advocates For Increase In Mineral Royalties

The Center for Democratic Development- Ghana (CDD) has added their voice to calls for an increase in the mineral royalties allocated to mining districts in the country.

Despite Ghana’s longstanding history as a resource rich nation, it is widely known that communities that produce these minerals are lagging behind in terms of development.

According to Emmanuel Yeboah, a research analyst with CDD-Ghana the percentage of mineral loyalties allocated to mining communities are woefully inadequate accounting for the gap in development in these districts.

Whiles blaming the late disbursement of funds, Mr. Yeboah said the 20% of funds transferred into a designated Mineral Development Fund account of the districts are insufficient to facilitate any meaningful development of the Assembly stressing that only 10% of the money gets to the Assembly whiles the other 10% is transferred into the account of the Office of the stool lands.

Speaking at a stakeholder meeting to reveal the CDD’s report on the Mining District Development Scorecard (MDDS) in Obuasi, Emmanuel Yeboah appealed to the government through the Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, the Minerals Commission, the Ghana Revenue Authorities and other key stakeholders to consider increasing the percentage of the mineral royalties allocated to the districts to bridge the development gap in the mining communities.

Scores Below

The Obuasi Municipal ranked 6th in the latest 2023 Mining District Development Scorecard (mdds) league table with a score of 35.4 out of 100 points according to the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development.

The district performance score was said to be below the MDDS overall score of 38.4 points. This suggests severely ‘weak’ governance practices in the Municipality management and utilization of mineral royalties.

The Mining District Development Scorecard is an initiative of the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), with support from Ford Foundation. It was introduced to track the usage of mineral revenue in mining districts in the country.

The two-year project seeks to promote transparency, accountability and improve social and human development ‘outcomes.’

The project’s long-term goal is to empower and strengthen community participation in natural resource governance and management for better development at the sub-national level in Ghana.

Obuasi’s score was only better than Asutifi North District and Prestea- Huni valley Municipal. He said the Municipal scored poor in two MDDS major component areas, that is, Local management committee effectiveness and mineral development fund utilization efficiency.

He said “accross all the 5 major components of the MDDS, the Obuasi Municipal scored an average of ‘ very good’ in ten out of twelve (12) subcomponents that were assessed and scored using administrative data sources prepared by the Assembly”.

The Research analyst at CDD added that per their research, they discovered weak fiscal transparency as one of the challenges of the Assembly and the local mining committee.

Public education

The chairperson of the Local Mining Committee of the Obuasi Municipality Dr. Amina Achiaa Asiedu Amoah (Mrs) has assured that his committee will intensify its awareness creation to divulge information on the activities of the committee.

She also added her voice to calls for increase in mineral royalties allocated to the districts to speed up development in the mining communities and finance the activities of the LMC including public outreach programmes.

Ali Tanti Robert, Executive Director of the Center for Social Impact Studies (CESIS) also admonished the Obuasi Municipal Assembly to scale up its public engagement campaigns to render account to the public on the utilization of mineral royalties.