Skip to main content

We must add value to our minerals to create employment- Petroleum Minister


By: Fred Yaw Sarpong- Daily Express

Leaders in Africa especially those in the Economic Community of West Africa State (ECOWAS) sub-region have been urged to create value addition to the mineral resources at their disposal in order to create employment for their people.

The Minister for Petroleum, Mr. Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah said the region is blessed with all kinds of resources such as oil and gas, gold, diamonds, bauxite, manganese, iron ore, limestone, coal, uranium and among other.

“Despite our region’s undisputed potential in all these resources, there remains the challenge of taking the opportunities to optimally utilize this resource potential,” Mr. Armah-Kofi Buah said this in his opening address at the on-going three-day 1st ECOWAS Mining and Petroleum Forum and Exhibition (ECOMOF) at the Accra International Conference Center.

The forum is under the theme: “Valorizing West Africa’s Mineral and Petroleum Resources through Regional Cooperation,” and it expected to end today Thursday 8 October, 2015. Over 100 delegates made up of mining and petroleum Ministers from the sub-region attended forum.

He said individual countries of the sub-region continue to compete among themselves to export unprocessed mine products, without the least efforts at adding value to these minerals. “We have failed to do this to improve our economies,” he added.

The Minister said “oil continue to flow from wellheads from oilfields offshore and onshore to markets abroad to serve foreign refineries while governments in our sub-region spend scarce foreign exchange to import finished products.”

Mr. Armah-Kofi Buah said as governments and individual countries continue on this path, they are not only denying their citizens the opportunities of capturing the enormous value associated with the entire value chain of these resources, but they are also creating decent jobs in foreign lands while the sub-region populations hallow in rising unemployment, a phenomenon that is becoming a security threat in the sub-region.

“In a similar vein, we are creating entrepreneurs, growing allied businesses in foreign lands and building their economies at the expense of our indigenous business and national economies,” the minister noted, adding that “it is the need to reverse this paradox of hunger in the mist of plenty.”

“What can we do to make sure that crude oil that we are all producing so much in the sub-region, we are not selling it to Europe and other countries to be produce to us back to buy as finished product?

“We must strategize to make sure that our refineries are working. It is time we pull resources together to put up some of these refineries in the region,” he appealed to ECOWAS leaders.

The Minister stated that “we can come together and establish a good crude oil refinery here in Ghana while a gold refinery can be located in another member country, just to make sure that our resources are refine here in the region by adding value to them,”

He appealed to the participant at the forum to provide foundation blocks that will enable the sub-region construct the needed transformative agenda to deliver national and regional economic development, create employment, and above all, improve the standard living of the average ECOWAS citizen through value added utilization of collective resources.

The President of ECOWAS Commission, H.E. Kadre Desire Ouedraogo promised that the commission will continue to be guided by ots core operative principles that border on cooperation, harmonization and integration.

“We will continue to make concrete proposals that will enable the ECOWAS Authority of Heads of State and Government and the Council of Ministers take decisions on the main orientations of policies of Member States and the Community.








Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Vodafone sells 45% shares in Verizon for US$130 billion

Vodafone has sold its 45% stake in Verizon Wireless to US telecoms group Verizon Communications in one of the biggest deals in corporate history. The US$130 billion (£84bn) deal was announced by Vodafone after the close of trading on the London Stock Exchange. The company will return £54 billion to its shareholders, of which £22 billionn will go to shareholders in the UK. Vodafone will also invest money in its business, with funds earmarked for high speed mobile phone networks. It said that by 2017 its main five European markets would have almost complete 4G coverage. Possibly it would be wrong to carp and wring hands that Vodafone won't be paying a penny of tax to the British taxman” Vodafone group chairman Gerard Kleisterlee said: "The transaction will position Vodafone strongly to pursue our leadership strategy in mobile and unified communication services for consumers and enterprises, both in our developed markets and across our emerging markets businesses." The...
Post a Comment
Read more

Shortage of weighing cards hit major hospitals in Accra

By: Fred Yaw Sarpong- Daily Express There is scarcity of Child Health Records Book (weighing cards), in some major public hospitals in the capital, information reaching the Daily Express indicates. Checks by this paper revealed that while some of the hospitals have being encountering the shortage for about a year now, others started experiencing it six months ago. In place of the Child Health Record Book (weighing card), the nursing mothers are given a single card on which information of children are recorded on it. Those hospitals identified are the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, Korle Bu Polyclinic, Kaneshie Polyclinic, Adabraka Polyclinic and the Ridge Hospital. At the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, the nursing mothers are given yellow cards in place of the weighing cards. The Public Relations Secretariat at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital said such information has not come to their notice and for that matter they cannot comment on it. “We do not have some ...
Post a Comment
Read more

ABL launches chibuku super in Bolgatanga

By: Fred Yaw Sarpong sarpong007@gmail.com Accra Brewery Limited (ABL) has officially launched the Chibuku Super drink at Bolgatanga in the Upper East region with the aim of reaching a lot of customers. Mr. Thomas Nii Ponku, Supervisor in charge of Chibuku Super at ABL told Daily Express that the management decided to launch the Chibuku Super drink in the Upper East region because they’ve realized it is similar to a traditional drink in the region. “Chibuku is like a well developed pito, a traditional drink made from fermented millet or sorghum in the Northern part of Ghana. So the idea is to provide them with similar drink,” he added. Mr. Nii Ponku disclosed this when members of the Institute of Finance and Economic Journalists (IFEJ) toured the facility of ABL to acquaint themselves with the expansion project at the factory. He mentioned that after a feasibility study, they realized there is a potential market for the product in the northern part of Ghana ...
Post a Comment
Read more