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Ghana receives 7% out of US$23bn from gold-Report

The report said in the last four years (2010-2013) Ghana’s average share of the total value of Ghana’s gold production was approximately 7 percent.

 

A report by the Africa Centre for Energy Policy has shown that Ghana received 1.7 billion USD in taxes alone, out of a total of $23 billion value of gold production in the period 2010 to 2013.

"In the last four years (2010-2013) Ghana’s average share of the total value of Ghana’s gold production was approximately 7 percent. While Ghana received 1.7 billion USD in taxes, the total value of Ghana’s gold production was exceeding 23 billion USD in the four-year period," according to the report titled ‘Golden Days for Newmont.’

Similarly, the report said, "in 2011 Ghana’s gold production valued 5.78 billion USD and made up 38 percent of total export earnings but Ghana only received 0.51 billion USD in tax and royalties constituting only 10 percent of the export value."

The report used Newmont Ghana as its case study.

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The report said Newmont from 2003 to 2012 paid less than US$500million in taxes to the government of Ghana despite reporting annual revenues of US$931million in 2012, US$919million in 2011 and US$655million in 2010, totalling about US$2.5billion in three years.

“While Ghana’s economic performance is declining over the years, the mining sector grew by 11.7% in 2013 (EITI, 2014),” the report said.

The World Gold Council  has emphasised that revenues from gold mining account for the lion share of Ghana’s total mineral revenues but comparing Ghana’s take of the total value of Ghana’s gold production, it appears to be under-taxed.

The Finance Ministry in 2005 declared total government receipts from the mining sector to be 40.6 million GHS, or approximately 37.5 million USD, including royalties, taxes and dividends

"A recent European Commission (EC) study also explicitly concluded that Ghana’s tax laws potentially increased the risk of transfer pricing malpractices in the mining sector (EC 2012)," according to the report.

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Global Financial Integrity also estimates that trade misinvoicing in the form of export under-invoicing, and illicit inflows in the form of import over-invoicing over a tenyear period 2002–2011, may have led to 3.86 billion USD in lost government revenues for Ghana or on average 386 million USD annually (GFI 2014).

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