President John Kufuor says Ghana is attracting over USD$200 million for a "partnership" role in the 200,000 tonne per year VALCO aluminium smelter which Ghana bought off Alcoa about two years ago. Ghana paid for the the final 10% of VALCO from Alcoa in June for US$ 2m, in addition to a previous payment of US$18 million to Kaiser Aluminum for its 90% share in the smelter, which has been inactive since March 2007 due to power shortages.
Ghana has plans to relaunch the industry with a new bauxite mine and alumina refinery to complete the process in Ghana instead of exporting bauxite and importing alumina processing locally. Kufuor said "as I speak with you now, VALCO is attracting international offers of over US$200 m,"
He said the proposed deal was not an outright sale but a partnership. He did not give any further details or say where the offers had come from."We bought it (VALCO) two years ago at US$ 20m, now we are selling only part of it for US$200m and in addition will be earning interest that we never had in the past," Kufuor said. The announcement follows the approval by parliament last Friday of a US$900m bid by Britain's Vodafone Group for a majority stake in Ghana Telecom.
The ruling NPP described the sale of Ghana Tlecom as one of the most transparent in apparent reference to divestitures in the earlier NDC regime which did not experience any public deliberation.
