{"id":46613,"date":"2025-10-02T07:17:24","date_gmt":"2025-10-02T07:17:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/?p=46613"},"modified":"2025-10-02T07:17:27","modified_gmt":"2025-10-02T07:17:27","slug":"raw-gold-brings-ghana-only-1-5-profit-prof-bokpin-urges-value-addition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/2025\/10\/02\/raw-gold-brings-ghana-only-1-5-profit-prof-bokpin-urges-value-addition\/","title":{"rendered":"Raw gold brings Ghana only 1\u20135% profit \u2014 Prof Bokpin urges value addition"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A professor of finance at the University of Ghana Business School, Godfred Bokpin, has said Ghana\u2019s economy was being weakened by short-term policies in mining and agriculture, which were failing to deliver meaningful profits, jobs, or tax revenue.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking in a radio interview on Joy FM<\/em> on Wednesday [October 1, 2025], Prof Bokpin argued that the country\u2019s reliance on exporting raw gold is unproductive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen you do the analysis, the maximum profit you can get from exporting raw gold like we have been doing is between one and five per cent. The maximum profit,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By contrast, he explained that processing gold and investing in responsible mining would yield much higher returns. \u201cWhen you process your gold, you do responsible mining, and you want to take advantage of the entire value chain, the minimum profit that you derive is 10 per cent. Minimum. So it can go as high as possible,\u201d he stated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prof Bokpin said this gap explains why Ghana\u2019s gold earnings are not translating into real development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEven though we are saying that there is uptake of gold exports recently, the government told us that gold exports have gotten billions of dollars \u2014 that is not spendable money. That is not impacting our revenue envelopes significantly. That is not money for President Akufo-Addo to spend on infrastructure and transform it,\u201d he argued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He cited the Bank of Ghana\u2019s records, noting that when the central bank participated in the gold-for-oil scheme \u201cthey booked losses.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He warned that Ghana is enriching other countries through the export of raw minerals. He pointed to the United Arab Emirates as an example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMore than 80 per cent of our gold export now is going to the United Arab Emirates. They are the ones who have set up manufacturing companies, adding value to raw gold that is exported from Ghana in London, and they wash it and resell it to the rest of the world for higher value. It is like we are not going to school,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Turning to agriculture, Prof Bokpin said the sector, despite contributing nearly a fifth of national output, adds little to tax revenue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you speak agriculture, its contribution to GDP on every course is just around 17 per cent. Agriculture is delivering close to 10 per cent of their tax revenue. If it comes to Ghana, agriculture is delivering less than 1 percent,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He blamed the poor performance on the absence of business-driven policies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve left it entirely to peasants, farmers, and the rest of them. We are not applying business sense to agriculture. Feeding people is business. It\u2019s wealth creation. So we are losing from that perspective,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Prof Bokpin, both mining and agriculture are failing to create sustainable jobs. \u201cIf you compare other countries that are doing proper mining, and you compare employment generation to that of Ghana, you can see that in terms of business job creation, employment generation, the employment response to growth in the mining and quarrying sector is very weak,\u201d he noted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He referred to World Bank data which showed that between 2012 and 2023 Ghana\u2019s economy created only 250,000 net jobs, while 2.7 million people entered the labour market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He linked this weak performance to leadership that prioritises immediate gains over long-term transformation. \u201cThis is not the kind of leadership we voted for,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat would be weak leadership  leadership that puts a premium on its short-term interest at the expense of medium and long-term economic transformation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prof Bokpin disclosed that he had raised concerns with international organisations, stressing that irresponsible mining must now be treated as an economic emergency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI have sent a memo to certain international organisations and the position we are pushing is that we are at the point where we must recognise the macro-criticality of irresponsible mining in our macro-framework modelling. There cannot be any sustainable modelling of Ghana\u2019s macro-economic framework and exclude irresponsible mining in the devastation that lies ahead of us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He added that Ghana must urgently reflect on how it manages its natural resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got to sit down and ask ourselves whether we are benefiting optimally from our natural resources that have an expiry date. Remember, it will not be there forever. And whether there is no other way that we can use this money in a manner that benefits Ghanaians broadly even for generations yet unborn, so that the next generation will not feel sorry that we came ahead of them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He ended with a warning that future generations would pay for today\u2019s neglect. Quoting scripture, he said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe fathers have eaten sour grapes and the teeth of the children have been set on edge. This is where we are.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A professor of finance at the University of Ghana Business School, Godfred Bokpin, has said Ghana\u2019s economy was being weakened by short-term policies in mining and agriculture, which were failing to deliver meaningful profits, jobs, or tax revenue. Speaking in a radio interview on Joy FM on Wednesday [October 1, 2025], Prof Bokpin argued that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":36157,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[147,13052,5569,7358,3977,7893,287,7396,9309,5196,6732,12565,746,12354,3577,1237,192,12502,5918,12068,2264,6543,8995,10954,11493,13014,7407,1828,9974,5423,3684,5721,10742,7795,5612,5441,10917,3805,10462,10313,12090,8383,6736,1502,214,963,12091,6348,36,2920,594],"class_list":["post-46613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-agriculture","tag-akufo","tag-arab","tag-bank","tag-central-bank","tag-chain","tag-children","tag-data","tag-dollars","tag-economy","tag-emirates","tag-farmers","tag-feel","tag-finance","tag-future","tag-gdp","tag-ghana","tag-ghanaians","tag-gold","tag-goldboard","tag-government","tag-growth","tag-infrastructure","tag-international","tag-interview","tag-job-creation","tag-jobs","tag-labour","tag-leadership","tag-lies","tag-london","tag-losses","tag-market","tag-mining","tag-money","tag-oil","tag-poor","tag-president","tag-prof-bokpin","tag-professor","tag-raw-gold","tag-revenue","tag-school","tag-tax","tag-university","tag-university-of-ghana","tag-university-of-ghana-business-school","tag-us","tag-world","tag-world-bank","tag-who"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46613"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46614,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46613\/revisions\/46614"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}