By 2030, Ghana will stop exporting raw mineral ores – Mahama  

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Makay
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John Mahama

President John Dramani Mahama has announced that by 2030, Ghana will stop exporting raw mineral ores like Bauxite, Manganese.

 According to John Mahama, that is the way Ghana can provide opportunities for our people to stop them from braving the dangers of the Sahara and Mediterranean to try to get to Europe to look for opportunities.

He highlighted that the strategy is already being applied to the cocoa sector, which he noted is facing challenges.

Speaking at the Accra Reset Addis Reckoning event in Addis Ababa on Saturday, February 14, President Mahama explained Ghana’s cocoa challenges, “There are issues, and I’ll just give one example from Ghana. Just before I left, we had a crisis in our cocoa sector. We set the producer price for the farmer. By the time we set the price, the cocoa on the international market was $7,200.

And we have a policy where we gave 70% of the world market price to the farmers. The other 30% is used by the administration to supply fertilisers to the farmers, provide scholarships for their children, and all that kind of thing”.

“The cedi’s value was 11.5 cedis to $1. After we set the producer price, the world market price has declined to $4,200. The cedi has appreciated in value by 10.7 to the dollar. So suddenly it means that for every ton you buy at the producer price, you have a gap, and so we’ll be losing. And so we held a crisis meeting”.

John Mahama further explained government’s decision to stop relying on foreign funding arrangements for cocoa purchases saying, “We took decisions that one of the major problems is that to buy cocoa from our own farmers, we rely on funding from outside. You know what the collateral for funding is? Our cocoa beans. So you have to collateralise the beans. The financier buys the beans, just ships them [out]. They pay you the international market price.

So one of the key decisions we’ve taken is that we’re going to stop foreign funding for the purchase of our cocoa. We are going to raise domestic bonds. We have enough cedis in Ghana to pay for our cocoa. We’re going to raise domestic bonds and buy our own cocoa. We don’t need to collateralise the beans. And you know the interesting part?

We have the capacity to process 400,000 tons of those beans. But because the beans are collateralised, we cannot allocate [them] to local processors. We have to ship all the beans outside.

Now, if we buy them ourselves, take 400,000 tons out of the beans and give it to our local processors to add value, that is what Accra Reset is about”.

President Mahama further declared, “I say by 2030, there are not going to be any raw manganese ores out of Ghana. We are not going to ship manganese ore, bauxite, or iron ore out of Ghana raw. You must process all that locally. That is the only way we can provide opportunities for our people.

Our young people are not as patient as our generation. They want to see progress and prosperity today. That is why Accra Reset has that urgency that we need to implement in order that we stop our young people from braving the dangers of the Sahara and Mediterranean to try to get to Europe to look for opportunity.

So I want to thank you who found time to attend. This is Addis Reckoning. From Addis, we must start implementing”.

Watch the video below: