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


News in Brief

Improve accountability in petroleum revenue management’

  • SOURCE: | qwesa2big
  • Ghana_Cedi_banknotesTHE Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC) has called for greater accountability in the management of petroleum revenues. Consequently, it has urged Parliament to make it mandatory for the reconciliation report submitted by the Minister of Finance in the first quarter of the year to include a report detailing the otucomes and impact of annual budget funding amount (ABFA) spending in the preceding year.

    The report, the committee said, should also mandatory include the list of the projects to be supported by the ABFA in the current year and their justification.

    According to PIAC, the measures would forestall arbitrariness in the system. The call by PIAC was made in its 2014 annual report on the management of petroleum revenues.

    National Dialogue

    Among other recommendations, the committee stressed the urgent need for the ABFA to be better targeted and well-focused to help maximise its effectiveness and impact on the socio-economic development of the country.

    In view of that, it called for a national dialogue on how best the nation could derive the most benefits from its hydrocarbons resources.

    It suggested that the proposed dialogue should take place preferably before the next budget and its outcomes used to determine ABFA allocation in the 2016 budget.

    Exchange rate

    Also, the committee recommend that to make it easy for reconciliation and authentication of payments and disbursements of the ABFA to various priority areas, the exchange rate used to convert the amounts into cedis should be published by the Ministry of Finance in the annual and reconciliation reports on petroleum funds. In addition, it called for the Ministry, Bank of Ghana (BoG) and the Investment Advisory Committee (IAC) to work together to establish guidelines for interest to be earned on any unutilised funds, be it on the balances of the ABFA or those set aside for specific purposes.

    Invest Unutilised funds

    This will help forestall the recurrence of the situation experienced in 2014 when US$222.93 million remained in the consolidated fund through the year, the report said’

    It also noted that the allocation to the ABFA in 2014 was distributed to only three priority areas, namely: expenditure and amortisation of loans, roads and other infrastructure and agricultural modernisation.

    “No allocation was made to the capacity building ‘ priority area in 2014 because planned expenditure was contingent upon the China Development Bank (CDB)-related small and medium enterprise SME projects incubation facility which did not take off” it explained.

    Source: Daily Graphic

    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