Gold Fields faces obstacle in Ghana

Gold Fmining and milling equipment applicationsields will be unable to bring a major $700m expansion at its Damang mine in Ghana into production if the government there goes ahead with a proposal to raise corporate taxes, Tommy McKeith, the head of Gold Fields’ growth and international projects, said yesterday.

Ghana is not the only country that is changing its fiscal arrangement for mining companies. SA has proposed a R200 per ton carbon tax that CEO Nick Holland described yesterday at a presentation to analysts as something local mining companies could "ill afford". At the presentation, the management and heads of the four regions in which Gold Fields operates outlined the state of the company’s mines and growth strategies. Its plan is to reach a target of 5-million ounces either in production or in development by 2015, from 3,5-million ounces of production now. One of the main projects is the Damang Super-Pit, which will enlarge the existing opencast mine and go deeper to reach unexploited ore in a project that...