The Center for Democratic Development- Ghana (CDD-Ghana) has added its 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.
Mr Emmanuel Yeboah, a Research Analyst with CDD-Ghana, stated that the percentage of mineral loyalties allocated to mining communities are woefully inadequate, accounting for the gap in development in these areas.
Mr Yeboah is of the view that 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, while the other 10% is transferred into the account of the Office of the stool Lands.
Speaking at a stakeholders meeting to reveal the CDD’s report on the Mining District Development Scorecard (MDDS) in Obuasi, Mr 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.
He revealed that the Obuasi Municipal Assembly, 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.
Mr Yeboah indicated that the district’s performance score was said to be below the MDDS overall score of 38.4 points, which he said, suggests severely weak governance practices in the municipal management and utilisation of mineral royalties.
According to him, the Mining District Development Score card is an initiative of the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), with support from Ford Foundation, introduced to track the usage of mineral revenue in mining districts in the country.
According to him, the two-year project seeks to promote transparency, accountability and improve social and human development outcomes.
He disclosed that 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.
He said Obuasi’s score was only better than Asutifi North District and Prestea-Huni Valley Municipality and that it scored poorly in two MDDS major component areas, which is local management committee effectiveness and mineral development fund utilisation efficiency.
He reiterated that, across all the five major components of the MDDS, the Obuasi Municipal scored an average of very good in ten out of 12 sub-components that were assessed and scored using administrative data sources prepared by the Assembly.
The Research Analyst at CDD noted that their research discovered weak fiscal transparency as one of the challenges of the Assembly and the local mining committee.
Dr. Amina Achiaa Asiedu Amoah (Mrs), the chairperson of the Local Mining Committee of the Obuasi Municipality, assured that her committee would intensify its awareness creation to divulge information on the activities of the committee.
She also reiterated the call 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.
Mr. Robert Ali Tanti, 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 utilisation of mineral royalties.
