The Vice-President of Ghana, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, has called on players in the Gold mining industry in Ghana to feed the new refinery with gold that is sourced legally.
Inaugurating Ghana’s new Gold Refinery in Accra on Thursday, Dr. Bawumia said that the establishment of the refinery was a strategic investment which would contribute immensely to the efforts of the government in ensuring value addition of the mineral resources of the country.
Explaining that responsibly sourced gold is extracted legally with due regard to the environment and devoid of conflict, human rights abuse and child labour, Dr Bawumia said that the current issues of illegal mining posed a big threat to the value addition efforts of the country as it had a real potential of tainting the gold ore which will be fed into the refinery.
According to him, this makes it difficult to meet the responsible sourcing requirement, and by extension, the ability to operate with international certification, that of the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA).
The report by Daily Graphic on Friday stated that the refinery is the first gold refinery, which Ghana holds a stake and has the capacity to refine 400 kilogrammes of raw gold per day or 132 tonnes of 24 carat, 99.99 per cent pure gold annually.
According to the report, the Royal Ghana Gold Refinery (RGGR) can process the entire volume of the gold exported from Ghana within 300 working days and process others from neighbouring countries.
It added that the refinery is a public, private partnership (PPP) between the Bank of Ghana, which took over the stake of Precious Minerals Marketing Company (PMMC), and Rosy Royal Minerals Limited.
GIK/APA