Could credit card-sized gold bars and Adinkra symbol embossed gold coins bedrock Ghana's tourism sector? For yonks, some of us have written countless articles, humbly suggesting that the Precious Minerals Marketing Company (PMMC), ought to be allowed to mint credit-card-sized gold bars, gold coins embossed with Adinkra symbols, and traditional jewelry pieces.
The idea is to turn the PMMC'S gold trading floor, into a magnet for prosperous middle class Chinese and other Asian national demographics - and help grow our inbound tourism market, by leaps and bounds, that way.
If Thailand earned nearly US$72 billion from 31 million visitors in 2016, would gold-bedrocked tourism, not be more beneficial to our national economy - than allowing assorted poverty-stricken foreign-chancers to come and engage in galamsay across Ghana's entire territorial landmass, with total impunity?
Even as we speak, criminals from all over the world, are busy destroying our groundwater sources, streams, rivers systems and other water bodies as they engage in illegal gold mining, with impunity - polluting our soils, sundry water resources, with heavy metals and toxic chemicals, in the process: and committing ecocide by felling trees to produce chainsaw bushcut lumber, to finance their operations, to add insult to injury. Haaba.
And, worst of all, they are smuggling tonnes of gold out of our bankrupt nation, year round, without paying a pesewa in taxes on them. Why are they being allowed to get away with what is an open secret? Isn't that madness? Haaba.
As wise and aspirational Africans, the question to ponder over is: Has the time not now come for us to eliminate the galamsay business entirely in ruthless fashion - and replace it with community-based ecotourism, bedrocked on PMMC trading floor sales of credit-card-sized gold bars, Adinkra symbol embossed gold coins and traditional-themed gold jewelry made by master-crafts-people?
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