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Ghana Diamonds
The government also is trying to expand Ghana's diamond mining
industry, which has produced primarily industrial grade gems from
alluvial gravels since the 1920s. More than 11 million carats of
proven and probable reserves are located about seventy miles
northwest of Accra. The main producer is the state-owned Ghana
Consolidated Diamonds (GCD), which operates in the Birim River
Basin. In the 1960s, the company mined 2 million carats of diamonds
a year, but annual production in 1991 amounted to only 146,000
carats. This downturn resulted from technical problems and GCD's
weak financial position. Production from all mines came to 688,000
carats in 1991 and to 694,000 carats in 1992.
In the early 1990s, the government announced plans to privatize
its diamond-mining operations and to expand production. At Accra's
invitation, De Beers of South Africa agreed to undertake an
eighteen-month feasibility study to determine the extent of the
Birim River Basin diamond reserves. The survey was to cost US$1
million. A De Beers subsidiary will be the operator and manager of
GCD, while Lazare Kaplan International, a New York-based diamond
polishing and trading company, will produce and market the
diamonds.
In 1989 the government established the Precious Minerals
Marketing Corporation (PMMC) to purchase minerals from small
producers in an effort to stem diamond smuggling. Estimates
suggested that as much as 70 percent of Ghana's diamonds were being
smuggled out of the country in the mid-1980s. In its first sixteen
months of operation, the PMMC bought 382,423 carats of diamonds and
20,365 ounces of gold and sold 230,000 carats of diamonds worth
US$8 million. The corporation also earned ¢130 million in 1991 on
its jewelry operations, up 48 percent from the previous year, and
it planned to establish joint marketing ventures with foreign firms
to boost sales abroad. Nevertheless, because of new complaints over
raw gem sales, the government in March 1992 ordered an
investigation into the operations of the state agency and suspended
its managing director.
Data as of November 1994
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