Salt industry-Ghana - The newly appointed Minister of Mines and Natural Resources, Mr. Mike Hammer has stated government's commitment to revive the salt industry into a vibrant and a competitive sub-sector, which would serve as a catalyst to support the petro-chemical industry, which is yet to take off in the country. "It is important to develop the salt industry, otherwise we will be confronted with problems where such a major consumable item (like salt) has to be imported into the country, when the petro-chemical industry takes off", he added.

The Minister made this observation at the Minerals Commission, during his familiarization tour with agencies under his jurisdiction in Accra. Mr. Mike Hammer further noted that, the trade balance of Ghana has steadily being growing negatively, showing that Ghana imports a lot of items, which is an indication that Ghana has a very weak import substitution manufacturing sub-sector.

"For the same reason, because Ghana is part of the liberalization of world trade in fostering globalization which has allowed a lot of imports to be brought into the country. I have a feeling if we do not do anything about salt, we will have huge problems", he noted.

Mr. Hammer said it is important the country builds capacity now, so that Ghana can develop the salt sub-sector, stressing that "The demand for the ECOWAS region is 4.5 million tones annually, and Ghana and Senegal are the only two countries having the real comparative economic advantage to develop salt. And between the two countries, they can only produce 600 metric tones"

According to the Minister, Ghana can develop this sector to enable it supply the domestic market and ECOWAS region and beyond. He urged workers of the Commission to work hard to move the Ministry forward, and also promised them that his Ministry would work hard to meet all their needs.

The Chief Executive Director of the Mineral Commission, Mr. Benjamin Ayeh hinted that the newly drafted mining policy would be out before the end of the first quarter of the year.

"The new regulations, such as licensing, compensation, settlement and earning support services, would also be out very soon, to also aid the mining industry to have a legal and regulation regime in place, which will make this sector position itself to contribute positively to national development", he explained.

According to the Mr. Ayeh, the formulation of these new policies would help reduce the huge leakages in the mining sector, in terms of revenue mobilization in the domestic economy and rather create linkages within the various sectors that would help to grow the economy.

Chris Twum

The Chronicle/23/02/2011