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Ghana Mulls Shake-Up of Mining Policy in Bid to Boost Income

Ghana Mulls Shake-Up of Mining Policy in Bid to Boost Income

(Bloomberg) -- Ghana is benefiting little from its mineral wealth and needs a review of its mining code and tax policies, said Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia.

While the West African nation holds a 10 percent stake in most mines in the country, it has earned almost nothing in dividends since 2012, rendering the operations “virtually useless,” Bawumia said Tuesday at a conference in the capital, Accra.

Ghana has to “re-examine our natural resources control and governance strategy, our resource fiscal regime from exemptions to carried interest, and how to use our natural resources to build a better and prosperous economy,” Bawumia said.

Hosting operations for gold producers from AngloGold Ashanti Ltd. to Kinross Gold Corp., the continent’s second-biggest producer of the metal also mines bauxite and diamonds. An exporter of oil and the world’s second-largest cocoa grower, Ghana’s government is driving policies to derive more benefit from its commodities and discourage unprocessed exports.

To contact the reporter on this story: Ekow Dontoh in Accra at edontoh@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Andre Janse van Vuuren at ajansevanvuu@bloomberg.net, Alastair Reed

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