Dr. Steve Manteaw, co-Chairman of Ghana Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (GHEITI) has called for governments to be accountable to their people in the management of revenues from the extractive industry.
They should commit to high standards of transparency and accountability to bring optimal benefits to the population.
He was speaking at a two-day GHEITI dissemination workshop held in the gold mining town of Obuasi.
It brought together more than 80 participants including traditional leaders, municipal and district chief executives.
He indicated that “payments disclosure in a country should involve all companies in the extractive industry, operating in that country.”
Dr. Manteaw said it was important for every nation, which had signed up to the extractive industry transparency initiative (EITI) to live up to the expected standards.
He noted that there were still some challenges of the EITI implementation including difficulty in accessing data, identifying and preventing the incidence of transfer pricing and other tax avoidance as well as tax evasion practices.
Ghana, he said, had always intended to use EITI as an instrument for policy reforms in the extractive industry – increase in corporate income tax from 25 per cent to 35 per cent, variation of the royalty rate from a range of 3-5 percent to a fixed rate of five percent and development of guidelines for the use of mineral royalties at the district level.
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