Ownership and control of our natural resources

Ghana is blessed with significant natural resources. We have gold, diamonds, manganese, bauxite, etc. However, the wealth from these resources hardly benefits the people of Ghana. Rather rich foreign multinational companies in concert with a few corrupt local elites take all the money leaving only the environmental devastation for the communities where these resources are mined. The rich foreign multinational companies own the resources and are given the right to repatriate all the profit that they make from these, leaving the country with only peanuts in taxes and royalties.

Missing Out on the benefits

But even the taxes have in most cases been taken away from the people. It has been estimated that Ghanaians lose up to 5% of GDP annually in tax exemptions given to multinational companies. In addition to gold and other minerals, oil was discovered in commercial quantities in 2010 and the country has produced millions of barrels for the past decade.

As with the minerals, so it is with oil. The people’s ownership of the resource is nil while foreign multinationals and their corrupt cliques of political elites make the most. No wonder the Western region where much of the oil comes from is one of the poorest regions in the country.
This must change. We want a Ghana where the resources go to benefit the people of Ghana rather than rich foreign multinational companies from Europe and North America.