Event

Ghana, has more than enough examples to learn from with regards to how oil exploitation, with all its potential nonetheless, hasn’t entirely translated to development for many countries. Nigeria, its West African neighbour — and the continent’s largest crude producer — saw successive governments deplete the estimated $400 billion earned from crude oil sales since the 1970s. Besides, Ghana’s own record in managing mineral revenues after a hundred years of gold mining was not the best.

Ghana’s oil and Gas production has become a major contributor to the national budget. Revenue from the sector by law is distributed to four areas namely ABFA (Annual Budget Funding Amount), GHF (Ghana Heritage Fund), GSF (Ghana Stabilization Fund) and GNPC (Ghana National Petroleum Corporation).

The industry contributes about 30% to the country’s GDP and revenues from the sector are currently being used to fund projects particularly in road infrastructure, agriculture modernization, Expenditure and Amortization of Loans for Oil and Gas Infrastructure, Capacity Building (including Oil and Gas).

So far Ghana has received about US$2 billion from its oil production since 2011 and additional revenue is expected from the gas sector.

The debate over what the best strategy to managing Ghana’s newest resource, oil, continues unabated with government, CSO’s and citizens alike continually putting forward what is supposed to eventually safeguard the country from falling on its side with a struggle of best utilizing gains made from oil exploration. In recent times, there have been concerns regarding the inadequacies of the law governing the sector, the lack of regulations to support the existing Petroleum Revenue Management Act (PRMA), the delay in the passage of the Exploitation and Production (E&P) Bill, the lack of financial discipline in the usage of the revenues.  Other concerns are the, unimpressive fiscal regime which has not changed for the better though there has been oil revenue support since the start of oil production, lack of transparency leading to violation of Sections of the PRMA where projects funded with ABFA, expenditure incurred as well as stages of completion are not made public.

To contribute to the public discourse on how best Ghana can be set on the path of making efficient utilisation of its oil revenue, the Institute of Financial and Economic Journalists (IFEJ) in collaboration with GIZ, SECO and other media organization are holding a public forum on the efficient management of the oil and gas revenue and resources on 5th August, 2015 at Kofi Annan ICT Centre in Accra- Ghana. The forum which is expected to be telecast live on TV with option of joining via social media, Whatsapp will be moderated by Emmanuel Kuyole (NRGI). Mr. Abdallah Ali-Nakyea as the main speaker will lead the discussions with a 20 minutes submission on the overview of the oil and gas industry in Ghana, revenue utilization from the industry, expectations, priority project areas and monitoring and evaluation while the Executive Director of the Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP), Dr. Mohammed Amin will serve as discussant. A representative of Ministry of Finance is expected to speak on the management of the US$2 billion oil revenue accrued since 2011.