Govt's 'war on galamsey' crippling local jewellery manufacturers - Ernestina Agyapong

The Chairperson of the Federation of Ashanti Regional Goldsmiths and Jewellery, Ernestina Agyapong, has revealed that foreign gold buyers from India and China who offer higher prices to local gold miners are gradually pushing local jewellery manufacturers out of business.

According to the Chairperson, local miners who previously supplied them with gold now prefer to do business with foreigners who buy the raw gold at a higher price.

She indicated that local jewellery operators are not able to compete with these foreigners who prefinance miners.

“There are many foreigners in the market who are even prefinancing the miners, including those operating on a large scale and those from galamsey. These foreigners even manipulate the prices by offering prices higher than the world market just to entice the miners. So before the gold is ready, there is already a buyer, and this is affecting our access to gold for production,” said Mrs Agyapong.

This unfair foreign competition has created difficulty in procuring gold for production as they can not afford the price of raw gold mostly purchased from illegal miners.

The Chairperson of the Federation of Ashanti Regional Goldsmiths and Jewellery who is also the CEO of Shanti Jewelry in a B&FT report, cited by GhanaWeb, called for the establishment of a proper agency where the purchase of gold can be made.

This she believes will solve the challenges that local jewellery producers are currently facing.

“We need an established office where local jewellers can buy gold from so that we don’t have to go to galamsey operators to buy from them, especially when government wants to stop it. Then, we need an assay office to help us standardize our gold, check the carats so that whoever buys our products would be sure it contains the specified carats of gold he or she wants."

She further added: “We don’t have any proper or authorised agency where we can buy gold from so we rely on galamsey operators. But due to the war on galamsey, it is becoming difficult to get the gold and the little we get also comes at a very high cost now due to high demand.”

Mrs Agyapong again indicated that the government's war against illegal mining saw the collapse of local jewellery operators when illegal miners who supplied them with gold were pushed out of business due to the ban on galamsey.