Federal government has set its eyes on opportunities offered by goldmine through a Presidential Artisanal Gold mining development Initiative, a step that would see it take full advantage of its over $ 200 billion dollar local market in the global gold market share while also shoring up its reserves for its scarce foreign exchange.
Nigeria boasts of about 200 million ounce of gold reserves and has produced, for the first time ever, in June 2020,artisinally-mined gold that has been processed and refined according to the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) standards required for or the use of gold as a reserve instrument by the Central Bank of Nigeria.
On the back of this development, the Central Bank has taken the decision to develop a gold purchase framework under the Federal Government’s Presidential Artisanal Gold mining initiative.
Also, the standardised gold bars, which would be purchased in Naira from Nigerian miners and refiners would not only create thousands of jobs for the artisans, but would provide a new sources of foreign exchange accretion to our reserves and stability of the naira.
Industry analysts have hailed the initiative stating that the step taken by the government would eliminate piracy, create jobs and tax revenue, amid concerns of dwindling oil resources.
“The initiative seeks to replace gold with crude oil. The presidential policy is quite good. So I mine gold,its mine. I sell that gold to the federal government, and I pay taxes,” said a financial analyst Kalu Aja in his official tweeter hande@finplankaluAja.
Celestine Okeke, a small and medium enterprise development expert told BDSUNDAY that the initiative is good, but also wants the government to ensure proper weighing of the ounce of gold exchange and harmonious relationship with various communities involved to avoid concerns of environmental degradation and illegal smuggling.
“For us to have good control there must be harmonious relationship with the local chiefs. Also to bring ethics to the mining the miners must access equipment to avoid environment degradation. The government should also ensure that local miners are not exploited .A proper community development agreement would help to avoid illegal operations and smuggling,” Sani Ahmed an official of Bhajia mining company in Kano told our correspondent.
However, with the steps taken by the federal Ministry of Mines in and Steel Development in formalising the activities of artisanal miners and assisting them in forming cooperatives to access an intervention fund from the put together by the federal government and domiciled in the Bank of Industry, analysts see more revenue coming to the government, rather than what it is losing through smuggling.
President Buhari has at the launch of the programme in Abuja noted that the operations will help in diversifying our revenue base as sale of gold by artisanal miners and SMEs at accredited centres will help the government in realising royalties and taxes from the sale of these assets.
He also disclosed that efforts are being made to support artisanal miners in improving the standard of the gold that would be sold to the Central Bank in order to meet the international benchmark.
