Ghana earned a total of US$6.67B from mineral exports in 2019, the Ghana Chamber of Mines said in its annual report.
This represents a 15.7 percent increase over the US$5.76B recorded a year before, in 2018.
The mineral export earnings, Ghana’s largest foreign exchange earner, represented 43 percent of the West African country’s gross merchandise export receipts in 2019.
The Chamber attributed the growth in revenue to the increase in the production of bulk minerals such as bauxite and manganese, and better world market prices for gold.
Gold constitutes more than 93 percent of the entire mining sector in Ghana, with its export earnings reaching US$6.23B last year, followed by manganese, bauxite, and diamond with US$412M, US$36M, and US$0.83M respectively.
Output for overall gold production, however, declined by 4 percent to 4.57 million ounces in 2019, compared with the 4.79 million ounces realized a year earlier.
Large scale mining offers 11,899 direct jobs in Ghana, while 7.7 percent of total domestic revenue in 2019 came from this sector.
The West African country became Africa’s largest gold exporter in 2018 when production slumped in South Africa due to mining sector unrest.
Source: News Ghana
