Last Updated- Nov 30, 2009 12:15 - - 0 Comments


Perseus to invest $160m in gold mining in Ghana

gold-barsAustralian gold miner, Perseus Mining will invest $160 million to mine the precious mineral in Ghana, the Managing Director, Mark Calderwood has told ghanabusinessnews.com on phone from his base in Western Australia.

Part of the investment capital is a bank loan facility of $85 million and the rest will be from equity finance.

He told ghanabusinessnews.com that the venture at Ayanfuri in Ghana is Perseus Mining’s first gold mining venture in the country and for that matter Africa.

Calderwood said the motivation to enter the gold mining sector in Ghana is informed by the country’s strong democratic credentials.

“It is also because of the high potential of the project, 200,000 ounces of gold and the strong price of gold,” he said.

Adding that the prospects of Ghana for gold is also a reason for the investment, saying the Ayanfuri project “is the most important project for the company in Africa.”

Even though the company has been in Ghana since 1995, it has only now began operations, and Calderwood said it was due to the difficulties familiar with entering the gold mining sector without elaborating.

In the last two decades, more than US$5 billion have been devoted to new mining projects in Ghana, according to Dr. R. Anthony Hodge, the President of the International Council on Mining and Metals.

Dr. Hodge who is a leading authority on sustainable development in mining, said this in an article published on the online version of the Sunday Monitor, a Ugandan publication in January 2009. He argued that “during that time, the national poverty rate has fallen 12 percent.”

Gold is Ghana’s major foreign exchange earner. According to the Bank of Ghana Gold exports for 2009 at the end of October amounted to US$ 2.1 billion compared with US$1.9 billion for the corresponding period of 2008, an annual growth of 6.3 percent.

And according to the Ghana Chamber of Mines, mining companies paid over GH¢179 million to government in 2008, representing more than 14 per cent of the country’s total internal revenue collection. Mining companies also paid about GH¢73 million representing three per cent of mineral revenue as taxes, levies and duties on the product to government as well as margins to the oil marketing companies.

Ghana is base to some of the world’s leading gold producers like Gold Fields, AngloGold Ashanti and Newmont Gold.

By Emmanuel K. Dogbevi

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