Osafo Marfo confirms Ghana has proven bauxite reserves worth $460b

The Senior Minister, Mr. Osafo Marfo says Ghana has proven reserves of bauxite valued at $460 billion, confirming an earlier claim by the Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia.

Speaking to the BBC Thursday afternoon, Mr. Osafo Marfo said, indeed the reserves have been proven and the country has signed a $10 billion Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with China to exploit the bauxite.

Asked why the country was signing a $10 billion MoU for bauxite worth $460 billion, he said the $10 billion would be used to explore the resource, after which a proper agreement spelling out the details would be signed.

Dr. Bawumia told journalists after returning from a trip to China that Ghana has proven reserves of about 2.8 billion metric tonnes of iron ore; 160 million metric tonnes of bauxite; 430 million metric tonnes of manganese and 430 million metric tonnes of limestone, excluding gold and oil.

“Our case is that if we need just $20 billion to do a major massive marshal plan and we have $460 billion sitting in the ground… what we really need is to develop a financing module that utilizes a small fraction of those reserves to finance infrastructure,” he was quoted saying.

By Emmanuel K. Dogbevi