Co-chair of the Ghana Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (GHEITI), Dr Steve Manteaw, has called for an integrated mining sector and the rollout of a policy to refined gold locally.

This, he believes will help curb the illegal export of raw mineral resources.

“If we were minded to have an integrated mining sector in this country, we would have actually fashioned out laws that prohibited the export of raw gold. And then what you do is that you will refine your gold locally, you add value to them and produce jewellery and export jewellery instead of raw gold,” he told Joy News.

Refining gold locally, according to him, will also help create jobs for Ghanaians and also generate revenue for the country.

He further raised concerns on the need to properly manage the country’s mineral revenue adding that Ghana’s economic hardship stemmed from the extraction of resources without a national vision.

According to him, the country has not been able to maximise benefits from mining due to improper policy in the mining sector.

“We haven’t quite managed our mineral revenue very well. If you look at the mining sector, only about 5% of the value of the industry is retained within the local economy and that is not too good.

“The reason we are where we are is that we have been extracting resources without having a national vision in terms of what role we expect mineral and petroleum resources to play in the national economy,” he indicated.

His reaction comes on the back of a virtual national dialogue on the country’s extractive policy organised recently by the Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP), the Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC) and the Ghana Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (GHEITI).

The program expected to influence the government’s decision on its policy plan on the mining sector.