China, the U.S. and other Western governments have mounted an unusually coordinated \u200bpush to get Ghana to halt a gold royalty hike they say could harm some of the \u200cworld’s biggest miners, according to three sources with knowledge of the matter and a letter from an industry body.<\/p>\n
Africa’s largest gold producer wants to replace its fixed 5% royalty with a\u00a0sliding scale\u00a0between 5% and 12% linked to bullion prices \u2013\u00a0part of an effort to capture \u200bmore revenue from gold’s run to successive historic highs.<\/p>\n
Miners said the upper bands of the\u00a0new regime, which could \u200btake effect as early as next week unless amended or withdrawn, would make Ghana one \u2060of the continent’s most expensive jurisdictions and could squeeze margins.<\/p>\n
Ghana has\u00a0agreed to cut\u00a0an existing levy to ease passage \u200bof the reform, Reuters has reported, but mining companies say the proposed scale remains too aggressive and have submitted lower \u200bcounter-rates.<\/p>\n
DIPLOMATIC PRESSURE<\/strong><\/p>\n In addition to U.S. and Chinese pressure, diplomatic missions from the UK, Canada, Australia and South Africa have also intervened, marking what three senior industry executives described as an unusually high-level response to a fiscal proposal.<\/p>\n “This is the first time I’ve seen the diplomatic \u200bcommunity get involved at this scale,” a senior industry source said.<\/p>\n Representatives from the missions met Ghana’s lands and natural \u200bresources minister this month and presented a joint document outlining concerns, two people with direct knowledge of the meeting said. The group \u200cis seeking \u2060further talks with the finance minister.<\/p>\n “The heads of missions expressed concern that the operating environment of the mines will be challenging,” one executive said. All the sources requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.<\/p>\n The UK, Canadian and Australian High Commissions and the U.S., South African and Chinese embassies in Accra did not immediately respond to requests for \u200bcomment.<\/p>\n MINING CEOS VOICE CONCERNS<\/strong><\/p>\n Global mining \u200bCEOs have also privately \u2060pushed back. Leaders of Newmont, Gold Fields, AngloGold Ashanti and Perseus wrote or delivered concerns directly to the lands minister in December and January.<\/p>\n Chinese-owned mines, including Zijin, Chifeng\u00a0and Shandong \u200bGold, have filed formal protests.<\/p>\n A letter from the Association of China\u2013Ghana Mining, copied to \u200bBeijing’s ambassador and \u2060seen by Reuters, warned the proposal could threaten the viability of Zijin’s Akyem, Chifeng’s Wassa and Shandong’s Cardinal gold mines.<\/p>\n “The royalty issue has united companies like nothing in recent years,” said the senior industry source.<\/p>\n The mining companies did not respond to \u2060requests for \u200bcomment. Ghana’s lands and finance ministries also did not immediately respond \u200bto requests for comment.<\/p>\n Ghana-linked producers have posted strong 2025 results, with Newmont earning over $7 \u202fbillion, Gold Fields\u00a0more than doubling and AngloGold Ashanti tripling profit, and \u200bPerseus\u00a0making $421.7 \u202fmillion, up 16% year on year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" China, the U.S. and other Western governments have mounted an unusually coordinated \u200bpush to get Ghana to halt a gold royalty hike they say could harm some of the \u200cworld’s biggest miners, according to three sources with knowledge of the matter and a letter from an industry body. Africa’s largest gold producer wants to replace […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":19671,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":16,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2362,3028,27],"tags":[396,158,4933],"class_list":["post-20091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-mining","category-west-africa","tag-china","tag-ghana","tag-gold-royalty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20091"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20091\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20092,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20091\/revisions\/20092"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}