Former Finance Minister Seth Tekper is asking the current government to return to parliament to review the Agyapa Royalties deal.
He made this known when speaking with Onua TV’s Bright Kwasi Asempa yesterday monitored by Talksafrica.com
According to the former finance minister the deal lacked transparency and is bad for Ghana hence, must be suspended.
“We have said that they should respect transparency, they should go back to Parliament to review the agreement,” He said
The current minister for Finance Ken Ofori Atta said at a press conference in Accra on Thursday, August 27 that the government is being innovative in the generation of revenue for developmental projects with regard to the Agyapa Royalties agreement.
Mr Ofori-Atta said government is in a hurry to fix the developmental challenges facing the country hence the need to use all manner of means within the legal framework to raise revenue.
He told journalists: “We are excited about the listing of Agyapa in London by the end of the year. It creates the first royalty company of that nature in Africa.
“It is really sad that for a country that has been mining gold since the 15th Century with the Portuguese, we still don’t have any international listing company either in gold or even cocoa.
“This must come to an end and we believe this is a strong statement to register Ghana’s presence going forward.
“We need to create structures that allow us to access the funding, if we don’t do that we allow ourselves to remain captives of the international companies that take our resources and simply market them to the same groups that we choose to ignore. There are those who say we should be careful not to mortgage yourself today, the gold in the ground for future generations.
“First of all, this is not the case but I have two questions for those who raise these concerns. If it is ok for a foreign investor who goes for searching to sell what is in the ground upfront then why not us?
TalkS Africa 