Comprehensive  Ghana Oil and Gas news, information, updates, analysis


Stories By Alumni

‘Ghana not effeciently spending oil revenue’

  • SOURCE: | qwesa2big
  • oilGhana is not spending its petroleum revenues efficiently,the Executive Director of the Africa Centre Energy Policy, Mohammed Amin Adam, has said.

    “I do not think Ghana is getting it right with the efficient investment of its oil venue resources,” he said with the explanation that this auld defeat the objective of
    ensuring that resources were translated into good development outcomes.

    Mr Amin was interacting with journalists, who were participating in a seven-day oil, gas and mining reporting training programme in Accra organised by Penplusbytes in collaboration with Revenue Watch Institute.

    It was themed: “empowering the media to play an active watchdog role over oil and gas revenues and resources.”

    Revenue management
    Mr Amin pointed out that revenue from the black gold, which Ghana started producing in December 2010, had to be put to good use to avert the plague that other oil producing countries, especially developing countries endowed with hydrocarbon resources, had suffered. Ghana discovered oil in commercial quantities in the deep seas in 2007.

    To manage oil revenues properly, Mr Amin explained that three areas, including transparency about where revenues were being invested, accountability on how much was being received and . efficiency on how the money was being spent were essential.

    He referred to how the oil revenue was put to use in the year 2013 where an amount of $24 million was spread over 63 projects covering about 2,124 kilometres road projects “this is not efficient spending because each of the projects would take not less 30 years to complete and in some cases the cost of the project has already doubled.”

    He said, “Ghana is not deriving value for money from the infrastructure projects funded with oil revenue as most of the projects had been delayed, operating under costly extensions and leading to cost over-runs.The money is supposed to be used for investment to improve living conditions of the people.”

    Recommendation
    Mr Amin, who recommended that the government considered spending on a few projects for purposes of efficiency, stated that it was not enough to provide transparency and accountability without putting the revenue to good use.

    “Ghana is being rated very high in terms of accountability, if we do not take care, it would cloud our sense of efficiency of spending revenue,” said Mr Amin.

    However, he was happy that the Minister of Finance, Mr Seth Terkper, in the 2014 budget, which was presented to Parliament, announced that revenue from the petroleum sector would be allocated to specific projects.

    Barrels of oil lifted
    According to a Deputy Minister of Finance, Mr Kweku Rickette-Hagan, as at August
    2013, a total of 74 million barrels of oil had been produced from the Jubilee field and that revenues received were allocated to various allowable sources in accordance with the Petroleum Revenue Act.

    Source: Emelia Ennin Abbey/ Daily Graphic

    Get the latest news and updates on Ghana’s oil and gas value chain by following us Reporting Oil and Gas on twitter @oilgasghana and like our facebook page and get at us on Google+. Subscribe to our group to get update

    Leave a reply

    About Us
    Reporting Oil and Gas project was launched on 4th June 2009 at Takoradi, Western Region, Ghana by Penplusbytes (www.penplusbytes.org) with the vision of providing a one stop online information and knowledge about Ghana’s oil and gas sector read more
    Twitter Activity Stream
     

    Partners We are proud to be associated with:

    Skip to toolbar