Guidelines for mining firms CSR underway

The Minerals Commission is leading development of a national framework to define parameters for mining companies on guidelines to carry out corporate social responsibility programmes in the country.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) strategies and practices can enable the mining industry to increase its impact on poverty alleviation and development in the country, in a cost-effective and practical manner.

Mr. Benjamin Aryee, Chief Executive Officer, Minerals Commission, disclosed to B&FT in Accra that the guidelines when fully adopted will standardise the corporate social responsibility programmes of the sector and in the future will be formally legislated.

“CSR is largely voluntary all over the world including Ghana, although it is not legislated, coming out with guidelines to direct mining companies on their social responsibility programmes.

“This will make mining companies operating in the country more responsible to the society, as well as contribute immensely to the socio-economic development of the country,” Mr. Aryee said.

In recent years, concerns about the sustainability and social responsibility of businesses have become an increasingly high profile issue in many countries and industries, including Ghana, and more so in the mining industry.

For mining, one outcome of the CSR agenda is the increasing need for individual companies to justify their existence and document their performance through the disclosure of social and environmental information.

The country’s minerals sector has been estimated to hold vast untapped potential, with the value increasing from US$0.64billion in 2009 to US$1.68billion in 2014.

Ghana, containing the second-largest area of gold deposits in the African region after South Africa, derives the bulk of its external revenue from gold mining which accounts for over 90 percent of the nation’s total mineral exports. Apart from gold, the country also produces significant quantities of bauxite and diamonds.

The country is also counted among the top-five nations across the globe for its manganese ore production and is home to some of the biggest names from the global extractive industry: Gold Fields, Newmont Ghana and South Africa’s AngloGold Ashanti.

The Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Chamber of Mines, Ms. Joyce Aryee, in a recent interview said there is need for government to mainstream mining as a catalyst for development through pragmatic policies and programmes that integrate the mining sector into the local economy.

She noted that mining companies in Ghana had contributed significantly to the country's development by their very existence in the rural communities, saying that the sector had social multiplier effects in the areas of education, electricity, potable water, health, information communication technology, banking and infrastructural development.

Mineral revenue for the first quarter of 2010 stood at US$809.89million - up from US$640.15million for the same period in 2009, figures from the Ghana Chamber of Mines has disclosed.

The sector injected a total of US$2.9billion into the country’s economy in 2009, representing an increase of 27 percent from the 2008 figure of US$2.3billion - with gold revenue increasing by 28 percent from US$2.2 billion in 2008 to US$ 2.9billion in 2009.