Gold For Oil Deal A Recipe For Disaster - Jinapor

Former Deputy Power Minister, John Abdulai Jinapor has taken a dig at the Nana Akufo-Addo government over the gold for oil deal. According to him, the initiative is a recipe for disaster. The Yapei Kusawgu legislator made the remark in an opinion piece.

The so-called Gold for Oil deal being championed by the Vice-President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia in an opaque and loud manner, is nothing but a charade that will end up piling unsustainable debt just like the so-called Sinohydro deal.

It will be recalled that after insisting that the Sinohydro agreement was a barter deal, the current government has just witnessed an embarrassing spectacle following the insistence by the IMF that the deal is nothing but a loan agreement and must reflect in the national debt accounting.

Clearly, the PMMC, which is the assayer of Gold in Ghana, has proven to lack the financial capacity and experience in gold trading. This knee-jerk policy is nothing but an attempt to fleece the Artisanal and Small Scale Miners.

Already the Bank of Ghana has artificially pegged the Ghana cedi to the US dollar at around GH¢9 to $1 in sharp contrast to what the commercial banks are quoting, thus GH¢12 to the US dollar. This ploy is nothing but an attempt to undervalue the price of Gold as payments will be made in cedis.

This fire-fighting approach will only result in the smuggling of Gold across Ghana’s borders. From all the analysis, it is obvious this policy is not well thought through and must be reviewed. The government must rather consult further and build consensus before proceeding with the policy.