l'll terminate shady Agyapa Royalties deal if I win - Mahama

Former President John Mahama says he will terminate the controversial Agyapa royalties deal if he wins the 2020 elections.

According to the NDC flagbearer, the deal is shady and smacks of wrongdoing like the botched “PDS deal”.

“Agyapa is a very shady deal, it is a theft of Ghanaian royalties. If I become president, I will not accept that deal. The people of Ghana do not accept that deal. It is against the money laundering rules. If you look at the people who put this together they are people close to the president and already they have been paid two million dollars.

“This president and his family think they can do anything and get away with it,” he told TV XYZ in an interview Sunday.

He said the Agyapa deal is not different from the terminated PDS deal.

“We will investigate PDS, especially when people related to the President were involved in structuring the PDS deal. There is enough evidence to investigate PDS and prosecute”

Agyapa deal

Parliament two weeks ago approved five agreements to allow the country to derive maximum value from its mineral resources and monetise its mineral income accruing to the country in a sustainable and responsible manner, in line the Minerals Income Investment Fund (MIIF) Act, 2018 (Act 978).

The approval will enable the country to use a special purpose vehicle, Agyapa Royalties  Limited, to secure about $1 billion to finance large infrastructural projects.In line with that, Agyapa, which will operate as an independent private sector entity, will be able to raise funds from the capital market, both locally and internationally, as an alternative to the conventional debt capital market transactions.

The funds, which are expected to be raised from the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) and the London Stock Exchange (LSE), will be a long-term capital, without a corresponding increase in Ghana’s total debt stock and hence without a public debt repayment obligation.