As global gold prices continue to climb, Ghana finds itself at a familiar crossroads: enjoying a commodity boom without a clear framework to secure lasting national benefits.
According to energy expert and Co-Chair of the Ghana Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (GHEITI), Dr. Steve Manteaw, the absence of a coherent governance structure for mining revenues threatens to turn today’s gold windfall into short-term consumption rather than long-term national wealth.
Speaking at a Strategic Policy Session on Ghana’s Gold Trade and Economic Recovery organised by the Economic Governance Platform (EGP), Dr. Manteaw warned that without deliberate reforms, the country risks repeating past mistakes where resource booms delivered little enduring value.
Lessons From Oil: Why Petroleum Revenues Were Treated Differently
Dr. Manteaw traced Ghana’s current dilemma to a contrast in how petroleum and mineral resources have been managed.
When Ghana discovered oil and began commercial production, policymakers were acutely aware of the volatile nature of petroleum revenues. Prices could rise sharply, but just as easily collapse. To guard against this uncertainty, the country enacted the Petroleum Revenue Management Act (PRMA) with built-in safeguards.
Under the PRMA, Ghana created the Stabilisation Fund to cushion the budget during revenue downturns, and the Heritage Fund to protect the interests of future generations. Clear investment rules were established, restricting petroleum revenues to low-risk financial instruments, deliberately avoiding speculative or high-risk investments.
“The idea was simple,” Dr. Manteaw explained. “Preserve value, avoid recklessness, and think beyond today.”
Protecting Against Political Excess
Another key pillar of the PRMA was accountability. Recognising the risks posed by political discretion, the law established the Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC), a citizen-led oversight body mandated to monitor petroleum revenue use and report directly to the public.
This structure ensured that petroleum revenues were not only spent, but scrutinised, with transparency embedded into the system.
“These safeguards were not accidental,” Dr. Manteaw noted. “They were informed by lessons we had already learned painfully from the mining sector.”
Mining Revenues: A Boom Without a Plan
Despite decades of gold production, Ghana has never applied a similar governance framework to mining revenues. According to Dr. Manteaw, this omission has become more glaring as gold prices surge on the international market.
“Unfortunately, we did not go back to correct the mistakes in the mining sector,” he said. “So today, we do not have a framework that guides how Ghana takes advantage of the gold boom.”
Without such a framework, gold revenues risk being spent from hand to mouth, driven by short-term political and fiscal pressures rather than long-term development goals. Infrastructure, savings, industrialisation and intergenerational equity are often crowded out by immediate budget needs.
The Forgotten Natural Resource Governance Bill
Dr. Manteaw revealed that efforts to address this gap were once underway. About a decade ago, stakeholders including GHEITI began developing a Natural Resource Governance Bill, designed to harmonise the management of Ghana’s extractive resources both petroleum and minerals under a single coherent framework.
The proposed bill sought to replicate the strengths of the PRMA in the mining sector, including stabilisation mechanisms, long-term savings, conservative investment rules and citizen oversight.
“I chaired and was deeply involved in that process,” Dr. Manteaw said. “The draft exists. I know it is with the Ministry of Finance.”
However, political transitions and shifting priorities stalled the process, leaving the bill unfinished and unimplemented.
Why Revisiting the Bill Matters Now
With gold prices high and global demand strong, Dr. Manteaw believes the timing is right and urgent for government to return to the stalled bill.
Reviving it, he argued, would allow Ghana to harmonise natural resource management, ensuring that gold revenues are treated with the same discipline, foresight and transparency as oil revenues.
Such a framework would also institutionalise citizen oversight, ensuring that mining revenues are tracked, audited and explained to the public, rather than absorbed quietly into recurrent spending.
Turning a Gold Boom Into Lasting Wealth
For Dr. Manteaw, the issue is not whether Ghana earns from gold, but how those earnings are managed.
“Gold is finite,” he cautioned. “If we spend everything today to solve today’s problems, we deny future generations their fair share.”
As Ghana debates economic stability, debt sustainability and long-term development, the call to resurrect the Natural Resource Governance Bill places mining revenues squarely at the centre of the conversation. The question, as Dr. Manteaw framed it, is whether the country will once again watch a resource boom pass or finally build a system that makes the wealth endure.
