Gold Fields West Africa pays $16m dividend to gov’t

Gold Fields West Africa has paid a dividend of $16 million to government through the Ministry of Mines and Natural Resources.

“In the course of the year, before we declared the dividend, we paid 5 per cent of our profit after tax and that is the first cheque which is $1 million for Daman.”

“The second cheque which is $5.8 million is the advanced guaranteed payment for Tarkwa and the last is a cheque of $9.2 million of profit after tax. This is the real dividend that we declared,” Executive Vice President and Head of Goldfields West Africa Alfred Baku told Joy Business.

Meanwhile, the Lands Minister Kwaku Asomah-Cheremeh has warned mining corporations against the non-payment of dividends saying sanctions could soon be meted out if they fail to do so by end of 2018.

“So many mine companies have defaulted in dividend payments. Some have stayed off it for almost 10 years. We have written to them and sanctions are bound to happen as per our laws, ACT 703. You can’t do your business and argue of not making a profit – then why are you in business?” the Minister stated.

Award

Gold Fields Ghana, (GFG) received two awards for its efforts in promoting Ghanaian businesses and boosting the local economy at the maiden edition of the Ghana Procurement and Supply Chain Awards.

GFG picked up the awards for Excellence in Procurement and Supply Chain (Mining), and Local Content and Supplier Development at a ceremony held in Accra.

More than 30 institutions and individuals were also recognized for their contributions to the industry with President Akufo-Addo receiving the Outstanding Leadership Award for his “visionary leadership and unflinching determination to transform procurement and supply chain thinking in Ghana”.

The Ghana Procurement and Supply Chain Awards seek to honour companies and organisations that support the development of Ghanaian businesses by purchasing goods and services from them.

Local content

Gold Fields has also renewed its commitment to increase local content to the benefit of local enterprise and the wider economy.

Gold Fields Ghana, which has operating mines in Tarkwa and Damang in the Western region, says its local content strategy ensures that a significant amount of the company’s procurement expenditure goes to local contractors and suppliers.

In 2017, the company spent more than 80% of its total procurement expenditure on local suppliers.

According to the mining company, the construction of a Tailings Storage Facility, which is a capital intensive project, at its Tarkwa mine was undertaken by a Ghanaian firm in 2017.

Also, the rehabilitation of a 33-km public road that links Tarkwa and Damang has been awarded to three Ghanaian firms through the Ghana Highways Authority.

Gold Fields Ghana says more than 1,773 local suppliers and contractors were engaged at its Tarkwa mine alone in 2017.

The company, which has been operating in the country for the past 25 years, says it is also committed to increasing procurement and sourcing labour from communities surrounding its operations.

Gold Fields Ghana believes that strengthening the local supply chain is critical to the development of local economies, as well as the broader Ghanaian economy.