Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta. |
The Agyapa Royalties agreement has not been
abandoned, according to Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta.
He claims that the deal is still on his mind
since he feels it is in the best interests of the nation.
Addressing a press conference in Accra on Thursday
May 12, “My firm philosophical belief really is that the capital markets are
meant for something that will lead us to equity resources and we are not
leveraging on it. Therefore, it is not the question of whether monetization of
mineral royalties or listing of the company is bad or good.
“It is good because that is how you raise the
resources. The question is the process of doing that. If you have a problem
with the process just articulate it, let’s cure it but let us not drop
something that will be good for us that will reduce our debt exposure. So those
are two very different questions. How best to do it as opposed to, don’t do it.
My mind is still there, I know the president has mentioned something about that
going through the AG, Parliament to do that.
“But it is not something that is an asset to the
country that one need to drop, you need to examine all your equity and debt
positions and the best choice for the country. We will never have done free SHS
if we listened to other people that is 400,000 lives that have a chance to do something,
we would have stopped shot at e-levy because of the noise, suddenly we have a
tax handle that will be pheromonally important for the country, so we need to
look at that.”
After being named the best financial institution
in the mining sector by the French-based publication Forbes Monaco, the
Minerals Income Investment Fund (MIIF) was reported to be rethinking its
strategy for listing its wholly owned subsidiary Agyapa Royalties on the London
Stock Exchange and the Ghana Stock Exchange.
MIIF's strategic purchase of nearly 14 million
shares and a 4.65% holding in Asante Gold Corporation, a Canadian and
Frankfurt-listed gold producing business based in Ghana, was recognised by Forbes.
It is recalled that in his first
state-of-the-nation address to that Parliament in his second term in office on
Tuesday, March 9, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo said “in
the course of this session of Parliament, Government will come back to engage
the House on the steps it intends to take on the future of the Agyapa
transaction”.
After a corruption-risk assessment by then-Special
Prosecutor Martin Alamisi Amidu, the deal, which was authorised by the Seventh
Parliament on Friday, August 14, 2020, had to be rescinded.
The Special Prosecutor resigned a few days later,
accusing President Akufo-Addo of meddling with his review of the contract under
the Minerals Income Investment Fund Act, 2018. (Act 978).
“The reaction I received for daring to produce the
Agyapa Royalties Limited Transactions anti-corruption report convinces me
beyond any reasonable doubt that I was not intended to exercise any
independence as the Special Prosecutor in the prevention, investigation,
prosecution, and recovery of assets of corruption,” Mr Amidu said in his
resignation letter to the president.
Nana Asante Bediatuo, the President's Executive
Secretary, responded to the resignation letter, saying that a meeting between
the president and a Special Prosecutor could not be considered meddling.
“Your accusation of interference with your
functions simply on account of the meeting the president held with you is
perplexing. In exercise of what you considered to be your powers under Act 959,
you had voluntarily proceeded to produce the Agyapa Report.
“The president had no hand in your work. Without
prompting from any quarter within the Executive, you delivered a letter
purporting to be a copy of you report to the president.
“The purpose of presenting a copy of the Agyapa
report to the president is decipherable from paragraph 32 of your letter to the
president in which you indicated that you hoped the report will be ‘used to
improve current and future legislative and executive actions to make corruption
and corruption-related offences very high-risk enterprise in Ghana’.”
President Akufo-Addo intimated on Tuesday, March 9
that the deal will be sent back to Parliament for reconsideration.
Source: ghananews.hrforum.uk
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