Revenue from Ghana’s gold exports in 2016 has exceeded the end year target by 17 per cent.
With some two months outstanding (November and December), revenue from the commodity has exceeded annual target of $3.3 billion to $3.88 billion by end-October 2016
According to the Second Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana, Johnson Asiamah, Ghana expects to rake in a total of $4.5 billion from gold exports by end of year – a development he says would helpthe country’s trade balance a great deal.
Mr Asiamah was reported to have disclosed this at this year’s Ghana Mining Industry Awards.
Gold has obviously performed better this year compared to the past few years. From January to October 2015, for instance, revenue from the commodity was $2749.9 – 40.96 per cent lower than what has been recorded this year.
Revenue from the metal for the full-year 2015 was also just $3.21 billion, thus the $4.5 billion projection from the central bank would be a whopping 40.18 per cent increase in revenue from the commodity.
Aided by a recent high rally on the international market, gold has indeed performed better than it did in 2015. The commodity now trades at $1,187.9. It began its rally in February 2016 and by July2016 it had reached its all-year-high of $1,373 until it started falling marginally again.
Aside the performance on the global market some domestic challenges have been addressed at least in the interim, if not permanently.
The power situation in the country has been improved this year compared to what it was in 2014 and 2015 when Ghana’s energy deficit widened, resulting in a load-shedding exercise thatincreased the cost of productions of many businesses.
Power makes up the largest production cost of mining companies operating in the country; as such the mining industry was one of the hardest hit by the load-shedding exercise.
The Finder