07:49 a.m. Jul 17, 1999 Eastern

ACCRA, July 17 (Reuters) - Ghana's Ashanti Goldfields Company Ltd (AGC) is to lay off more than 2,000 permanent employees from next week because of the slump in world gold prices, union officials said.

The company had already laid off about 500 casual workers for the same reason, Robert Kwesi Cole, General-Secretary of the Ghana Mine Workers Union, told a mining meeting in Accra on Friday between South Africa and Ghana.

``The management of AGC has already communicated its intention to lay off workers to the union, as the cost of production is becoming expensive,'' Cole said.

Ghana's mining minister, Fred Ohene Kena, and South Africa's deputy mining minister, Susan Shabangu, discussed ways of stepping up pressure to halt planned sales of gold reserves by Britain and the International Monetary Fund.

South Africa has sent delegations abroad to discourage future sales, the prospect of which has depressed the gold price to 20-year lows of around $253 an ounce.

Cole expressed fears that smaller emerging mines in Ghana might follow Ashanti's example, putting pressure on mining communities. He also feared for the impact on the environment if laid-off workers turned to illegal artisanal mining.

Ohene Kena said an IMF plan to sell gold to help Heavily Indebted Poor Countries would backfire ``since 34 out of 41 dentified HIPCs are in Africa, with 30 of them being gold producers.''

Ghana agreed to join an African delegation to travel to Europe and the United States to put the case against the sales.