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GOLD Fields was hoping to finalise the joint venture between its Tarkwa mine in Ghana and AngloGold Ashanti's neighbouring Iduapriem mine later this year before the country held its general elections.
The proposed JV was announced in March 2023 but has been held up in the course of negotiations with the Ghanaian government over which Gold Fields has so far not released any details.
Speaking on a media conference today following release of Gold Fields interim results for the six months to June CEO Mike Fraser commented, "the reason we have not put a whole lot of detail into the feedback is because there's a political process underway in the country and what we don't want to do is say anything that will undermine that process.
"What I can say is that we still have very strong support from the government on getting this through. We have alignment on what the terms and conditions on the JV looks like.
"We have been going through the steps of getting the Ghanaian revenue authority aligned on the particular issues that they need to opine on. The step beyond that is to get formal cabinet approval.
"We just need to get it through the steps and then get it through to parliament – hopefully at the next sitting which is prior to the elections at the end of the year. We would like to get parliamentary approval this year because we have been working on it for some time.
"But, if not and it falls into next year, we certainly don't see this as a derailer for the JV whether the current ruling party continues, or the opposition gets into power. It just may delay it. "
In May this year, reporting on the group's first quarter results, Fraser acknowledged one of the issues concerned the Ghanaian government's final equity stake in the joint venture.
He commented that "the whole issue in Ghanaian media of resource ownership is background to the election process.
"It is important that we make sensible commercial decisions. We are not ready to call failure on this, but as we get closer to elections, it might make it quite difficult. The last thing we want to do is make a poor decision against the backdrop of that political maneouvering."
