Ghana: Gov’t Plans To Clear Outstanding Legacy Debts To BDCs By End Of 2019, After Paying US$929M

The Government of Ghana is planning to clear all the legacy debts owned the Bulk Oil Distribution Companies by the end of 2019.

So far, government has paid about US$929.58 million between 2011 and 2019.

Chief Executive Officer of Ghana’s National Petroleum Authority (NPA), Mr Alhassan Tampuli, who revealed this at the launching of the 2018 Industry Report prepared by the Chamber of Bulk Oil Distributors (CBOD), described the development as commendable.

“There was progress made on government’s legacy debt to BDCs with the payment of all outstanding principal sums (USD427.11mn) and the validation of the interest components.

This brings to total an amount of USD806.25mn in subsidies incurred by government through its subsidy policy between 2011 and 2015.

“A total of USD929.58mn has been paid between 2011 and September 2019 with a total of USD52.62mn outstanding and expected to be paid by end of 2019, ” Mr Alhassan Tampuli explained on Tuesday, during the launch of the 2018 Industry Report prepared by the Chamber of Bulk Oil Distributors (CBOD).

Growth

Touching on how the downstream subsector has performed over the past two years, Mr Alhassan Tampuli noted that the annual growth in consumption of petroleum products reduced by 9 percent in 2016, increased by 6 percent in 2017 and reached its highest so far in 2018. 2018 saw a 15 percent growth in consumption from 3.4 million Mt in 2017 to 3.9 million Mt in 2018.

This, he said, rode on the back of successes realised in the fight against the illicit petroleum trade, thereby increasing official demand for gasoline, gasoil and LPG.

“This volume of consumption is the highest observed to date and it bears eloquent testimony of significant occurrence of economic activities anchored on the enabling environment provided by the government through deliberate policy initiatives aimed at propelling the private sector growth, since petroleum drives economic activities. It is also a testament of significant successes in the NPA’s efforts towards curbing illicit fuel activities in the country,” he said.

Fuel Adulteration

On fuel adulteration, Mr Alhassan Tampuli said his outfit was aware that petroleum products that did not meet national specifications were not allowed entry into the market by the NPA.

However, he said as a result of smuggling and dumping of petroleum products meant for export onto the market in recent years, the petroleum product marking scheme recorded high failure rates in 2016 and 2017.

Specifically, the recorded failure rate among retail stations averaged 6.20 percent and 4.91 percent in 2016 and 2017 respectively.

“It is gratifying to note that, our stringent measures in tackling fuel smuggling among others, have been successful as failure rate declined to less than one percent in 2018.”

 Source:www.energynewsafrica.com