Bright Simons, Honorary Vice President of IMANI Ghana, has reaffirmed his worries over the contentious Agyapa Royal sale, calling it "unconscionable" and "unpatriotic."
On Saturday, he made these remarks while participating in NewsFile conversations. In his argument, he reiterated the idea that the contract will not benefit Ghanaians, and that it must therefore be abandoned entirely.
According to him, the deal's structure alone is cause for concern, because it threatens Ghana's minimal royalties on its gold and mineral assets.
"The most crucial point is that no government should be granted the authority to refuse future governments money in the manner envisaged at the rate indicated."
We've seen cases when the current government takes future streams of income that will be used by subsequent governments, frontloads it, keeps the money for today, and ignores future generations.
Consider the money from ESLA and energy charges. Consider the funds from the GETFUND. And we build these buildings, front load the money, and spend it, forgetting about how we'll pay off our other obligations in a few years. He bemoaned, "We don't believe that's really appropriate."
"There should be a sense in which the government should not be looking at all the discretionary cash that we generate through royalties apart from those that are obligated by legislation to other purposes," he continued.
They should have invested that money into a smaller proportion of the gold at a far greater price." Bright Simons' remarks were in response to Finance Minister Ken Ofori-recent Atta's request for a re-look at the contentious Agyapa Royalties Agreement rather than scrapping it.
Mr. Ofori-Atta stated that the contract must go through the proper channels in order to succeed since it has the potential to lessen the country's debt burden.
The Finance Minister explained that the Agyapa deal "is not about whether the monetisation of mineral royalties or listing of the company is bad or good, it is good because that is how you raise resources" at a press conference on Thursday to announce details of the African Development Bank's 2022 Annual General Meeting.