Ghana’s over-concentration on gold as a primary mineral resource is “quite dangerous”, Chief Executive Officer of the Minerals Commission, Dr Toni Aubynn has said.

He told Starr FM’s Business Focus programme hosted by Paa Kwesi Asare that it was high time the country focused some attention on some other natural minerals that abound in the country.

“I think we have concentrated too much on gold and the effect is quite dangerous,” Dr Aubynn told Kwesi Asare on Tuesday January 13, 2015.

He wondered why there has been little attention on other minerals such as solar salt, limestone, kaolin, clay and other recently detected minerals such as lead, zinc and platinum.

Dr Aubynn believes a diversification in the minerals sector will inure to the country’s economy.

The former CEO of the Ghana Chamber of Mines said: “In fact in my days at the chamber and even before then, I thought that we had over-concentrated on gold. In this country we say Ghana is so blessed with a lot of mineral resources…but we have concentrated on only four, historically.

“Commercially we have gold, diamond, bauxite, manganese…these are the four minerals that we have concentrated on and out of this four minerals, one constitutes about 95 percent of the value: that is gold…which means that as a country our dependence is on one mineral. We are almost a mono-mineral economy in a way so sometimes there is a bit of exaggeration of how much minerals we are producing for which we should get so much money and that has to be addressed.”

Dr Aubynn described solar salt, for example, as “black gold”, which could have a great impact on Ghana’s economy if well harnessed.