Mr. Henry Ford Kamel, Deputy Minister for Lands and Natural Resources, at the weekend spoke against the misapplication of proceeds from royalties paid through the extraction of natural resources. He said as a result, government is fine-tuning a legislation and policy guidelines to make the payment of royalties devoid of abuse.

On 14th December 2010, the GHEITI Secretariat and the National Steering Committee in collaboration with the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning organized a durbar/forum at the Tarkwa Community Centre to sensitize the people on the principles of the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative. Although there have been several instances of sensitization activities for the Media, Civil Society, Companies and other target stakeholders, the Tarkwa Forum was the first of its kind to interact with people at the grass root and in an informal way. 

A global conference will be held for the first time to feature an EITI National Exhibition in PARIS from the 2nd to the 3rd of March 2011 where representatives from EITI implementing countries will be invited to present and share stories from EITI implementation unique to their respective countries. Ghana will mount a stand at this global exhibition and conference.

On 30th November 2010 the Ghana EITI Secretariat in collaboration with Publish What You Pay Coalition (PWYP) organized a knowledge sharing and information gathering workshop for stakeholders involved in the Ghana Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (GHEITI) and forestry sector. The workshop was to provide the opportunity for stakeholders to better understand the dynamics of fiscal transparency issues in the forestry sector, particularly with respect to its revenue streams.

About EITI in Ghana

The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) was launched by the UK Prime Minister at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, September 2002. 

The initiative encourages, government, extractive companies, International agencies and NGO’s to work together to develop a framework to promote transparency of payments in the extractive industries. The EITI therefore seeks to create that missing transparency and accountability in revenue flows from the extractive industry.

The Ghana EITI together with GTZ and SAP are underway to implement the IT reporting base software. In this regard, a training workshop was organized for the end users of the software and other relevant stakeholders. The purpose of the training was to give end users a hands on training for the use of the software.

Following the launch of the EITI audit reports, the Ghana EITI Secretariat in collaboration with the National Steering Committees is embarking on a series of dissemination workshops with the relevant stakeholders. One of the series is a workshop with Mining Companies and the Municipal/District Assemblies within the mining enclaves. The workshop is to inform the stakeholders on the contents of the 2006, 2007 and 2008 EITI audit reports.