The Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources has placed a 90-day ban on new applications for licences for gold prospecting and reconnaissance.
The ban takes effect from today and ends on September 30, according to the sector Minister, Mr Inusah Fuseini. It is to enable the ministry and its regulatory agency, the Minerals Commission, to clean up the country’s gold and minerals licensing regime on reconnaissance and prospecting.
Reconnaissance has to do with the initial work by mining concerns to determine the viability of a field with respect to mineral deposits, while prospecting is when they have received actual licences and approval for further analysis on the deposits, before actual production starts.
“The purpose of the moratorium is to enable the ministry, in conjunction with the Minerals Commission, to carry out, among others, measures relating to the clean-up of the mineral concession cadastre and eliminate speculators who have held licences for long periods without complying with the terms and conditions of their licences,” Mr Fuseini told the Daily Graphic in an interview Thursday.
Cadastre is an official register of the ownership, extent and value of real property in a given area.
Cancelling the licences of owners of concessions in a given area will help streamline the industry and make such concessions available to new investors.
Mr Fuseini said since the liberalisation of the mining industry in the 1980s, the country had unconsciously created a large body of speculators who acquired the licences and held on to them.
He said the measure was a first step and had come about because some individuals who had acquired licences to conduct reconnaissance and prospecting held on to them, only to sell them to foreign investors later.
“We think we should not encourage speculation because it deprives the nation of the needed benefit of mining,” he said, and expressed worry that most of the individuals holding on to the licences did not even comply with regulations.
“We think our mineral exploitation regime should include green fields. It should be possible for investors to access such licences and concessions any day. But so far all areas are encumbered and you may have the licence but cannot have a place to mine,” he added.
He said that partly explained why some illegal miners were digging everywhere with absolute abandon, saying, “We want to clean up all those speculators from the system and give licences to serious-minded people.”
Exception
The minister, however, explained that the moratorium applied only to applications for “reconnaissance and prospecting gold licences” and did not apply to small-scale gold mining licences, as well as other minerals.
In addition, he said, such licence applications already submitted to the Minerals Commission would continue to be processed accordingly.
According to the minister, the commission would continue to receive new applications for other minerals.
He, however, told the Daily Graphic that the duration of the ban, which was only the first stage, would be extended if need be, adding that the 90-day ban was reached cautiously in order not to frustrate genuine licence holders and seekers.
He also called on investors in the sector to support the measure, in compliance with the Minerals and Mining Law 2006, Act 703 and Minerals and Mining Licensing Regulations 2012, (LI 2176).
Background
The three-month moratorium, which was on the recommendations of the Minerals Commission, is not the first time such a ban has been imposed.
In 1984, with the advent of the liberalisation of the mining industry, the Minerals Commission, which had just been established, undertook a similar exercise which helped a great deal to disencumber the system and free the nation’s mineral cadastre for serious investors.
The commission called up all mineral licences in the country and placed a moratorium on the granting of new licences and concessions to streamline the system and revalidate rights as necessary.
Civil society view
When reached for his comments on the moratorium, the Co-chairman of the Ghana Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (GHEITI), Dr Steve Manteaw, said the move was in the right direction, pointing out that it was part of a wider effort to bring sanity into the mining sector.
“This is a step in the right direction and will clean up the system and end suspicions that some highly placed individuals had a hand in illegal mining in the country, especially in the small-scale sector,” he said.
Dr Manteaw, who is also the Campaigns Coordinator at the Integrated Social Development Centre (ISODEC), as well as a member of the World Bank Extractive Industries Advisory Group, commended the minister, as well as the Chief Executive of the Minerals Commission, Dr Tony Aubyn, for the bold steps to clean up the system.
Some industry watchers, who spoke on condition of anonymity, expressed the belief that recent changes at the helm of the Minerals Commission, including internal transfers and re-postings, were part of a gamut of measures to sanitise the mining industry.
