The government plans to introduce a new fiscal regime for the mining sector, Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia has said.
The new laws and regulations are to ensure Ghana derives maximum benefit from the extraction of mineral resources, the Vice President said.
Speaking at the 2018 Kuntum Festival in the Western Region, Dr. Bawumia said it was time citizens benefited more from the country’s natural resources.
“We have not really benefitted much from our natural resources and it is for this reason that we need, especially in the area of our minerals, to bring a new paradigm into how, as a country, we can benefit more from our mineral resources.”
The Vice President again complained that mines still tell the government that “they have not made any profits so they cannot pay any dividends to the government.”
For some of those, paying, the amounts are insufficient, Dr. Bawumia added.
“There are some mines that are paying but many are not paying sufficiently, relative to how much they are taking out of our country.”
These complaints notwithstanding, Ghana still made GHȻ 2.16 billion in 2017 from the mining sector, per the Ghana Chamber of Mines 2017 report.
Overall, the total mining fiscal receipts mobilized by the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) increased by 31 percent, from GHȻ1.65 billion in 2016.
Specifically, corporate income tax receipts increased from GHȻ 696.9 million in 2016 to GHȻ 969.6 million in 2017 while mineral royalty revenue grew from GHȻ 550.7 million to GHȻ 702.4 million over the same period.
Furthermore, employee income tax increased by 22 percent. The country realized GHȻ 487.9 million in 2017 as compared to GHȻ 399.9 million in 2016.
Regarding the share of total direct domestic revenues collected by GRA, the mining and quarrying sector accounted for 16.3 percent of those revenues in 2017.
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Source: Citinewsroom.com
