PMMC to Revoke All Licenses for Buying and Selling of Gold

The Precious Minerals Marketing Company (PMMC), will be introducing a new and improved license to clamp down illegal activities within the downstream sector of the precious minerals industry.

The new license is expected to have new security features which will make it counterfeit-proof.

In an interview with Citi News, the Managing Director of the Precious Minerals Marketing Company, Kojo Opare Hammond, said all existing licenses for buying and selling of gold and diamond will be revoked at the end of 2017.

This he said will allow for the issuance of the new licenses.

The PMMC is mandated to oversee the export of precious mineral from the small-scale mining sector, and the law requires at least 80 percent of foreign currency earned from exports to be repatriated into the country.

“We noticed some of them are abusing the system by trying to duplicate the licenses, so we are trying to introduce some sanity into the system by reissuing new licenses that will have certain security features that will make it impossible for anyone to just duplicate or photocopy and use,” the PMMC boss explained.

Before this, the PMMC intends to roll out a program to begin the re-issue of new licenses starting in December, “which will run until the end of the year [2017].”

“Effective January 1, everybody who is involved in the downstream industry, in terms of gold especially, will need to operate with that new license,” Mr. Opare Hammond said.

State of the PMMC

Earlier in 2017, it emerged that the PMMC, at the time, could not trace most of the companies involved in the export of $2.3 billion worth of gold in 2016, that did not result in the repatriation of foreign currency.

The company’s operations cut across buying, selling, grading, valuing, and processing of precious minerals to include appointing licensed buyers for the purchase of minerals mined by small-scale miners.

The PMMC has been noted as one of the five 18 state-owned enterprises that made losses in 2016.

The company recorded consistent losses throughout the period, and it was not able to pay dividends or surplus to the Government, according to the 2016 Annual Aggregate report on State Owned Enterprises.

Its revenue declined significantly by 83% from GHc136 million to GHc23 million in 2016.