– DR. BAWUMIA
Many Ghanaians have hailed the government’s Gold for Oil policy as an innovative way of
dealing with Ghana’s cedi depreciation and increasing fuel prices.
According to the Vice President, Ghana is a top producer of gold in the world, Ghana has not
rightly exploited the mineral to its benefit. This, he noted, will inure to the benefit of the
country as a progressive way of solving the country’s challenges.
Vice President Bawumia stated, “With this idea, we said, let us do something that the
textbooks don’t teach you, let us do something that is out of the box and this is why we said
gold-for-oil. We quickly looked at this and we negotiated with the suppliers of oil who were
very excited and happy to receive gold payment. Thankfully, on Monday, Ghana took its first
delivery of oil under the gold-for-oil programme”.
Dr. Bawumia speaking at the 74 th annual new year school of the University of Ghana on
Tuesday 17 January,2023, he said, “How are we going to change this whole way of doing
business as far as our natural resources were concerned? Take the case of gold in Ghana, we
have mined gold for over 200 years, and when I looked at the data, I realized that our total
reserves of gold in Ghana were just 8.7 tonnes at the end of 2021. One of the largest gold
mining countries, we are in the top 10 in the world but we have not accumulated gold to build
our reserves”.
According to the industrious VEEP, using gold to purchase oil to sell in cedis will reduce the
pressure of having to find dollars to import oil. Dr. Bawumia stated that the first consignment
that has been received is being tested to see its effectiveness.
By: Bernard Fiifi Amedeku
