Ghana accrues $3.208b from oil in four years

Ghana had total annual petroleum receipts of $ 3.208 billion from  2011- 2015.

But from 2010-2015, it produced 161,797,171barrels of crude oil, Mr Roland Affail Monney, the President of the Ghana Journalists Association and a member of the Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC) had said.

Mr Monney was speaking at a stakeholder’s forum organised by PIAC on the Management of Ghana’s petroleum revenue which was attended by 34 participants including representatives of pressure groups, professional and religious bodies and traditional authorities in Sunyani.

PIAC is a non-whip, non-partisan body with complete independent representation of citizens’ interest through compliance and monitoring and provision of platform for public debate among other functions.

He said from 2011-2015 the amount had been spent in the provision of various infrastructure for the socio-economic sectors including health, education, water and  housing delivery, energy,  transport, roads, agriculture modernisation, capacity building and strengthening of institutions.

Mr Monney cited among the PIAC’s key concerns that “Petroleum revenues have been used to tackle too many national problems at the same time,” and that had weakened the potential impacts of oil revenues on the socio- economic development of Ghana.

“Only 11 per cent of the petroleum revenue has been allocated to the agricultural sector, which is the mainstay of the economy”, he added.

Mr Monney said PIAC believed there should be properly-defined guidelines on the selection of the priority areas of project implementation in the country.

He urged the public to show interest about how the petroleum revenues were   distributed and used for the general benefit of the country.

He said the amount belong to the citizenry and is the duty of every individual to know how it is being spent for their benefit.

Some of the participants expressed worry about the regular increases in prices of petroleum and its rippling effects on prices of goods and services and appealed to government to introduce measures to stabilise the situation in the interest of ordinary Ghanaians.

Source: GNA