Petroleum Revenue Management Act requires amendment – GHEITI
The Ghana Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (GHEITI) has underlined the need for the amendment of portions of the Petroleum Revenue Management Act (PRMA) to facilitate judicious utilization of mineral revenue to equally and directly benefit local communities
The Act 815, 2011 was enacted by Parliament in March 2011, amended in 2015 (Act 893) to govern the management of the nation’s petroleum revenue.
Dr. Steve Manteaw, the Co-chair of GHEITI who made the call, said the amendment of portions of the Act was timely and necessary, to ensure fairness in the utilization of the nation’s petroleum revenue for the benefit of all.
The GHEITI is a subsidiary of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), a global natural resource governance standard which aims at improving natural resource in resource-rich countries through the full publication and verification of company payments and government revenues from oil, gas and mining activities.
Dr. Manteaw was speaking at the opening session of a two-day stakeholder’s engagement on the dissemination of the 2017/2018 Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) Report on Mining, Oil and Gas held at Abesim, near Sunyani.
It was attended by traditional authorities, civil society organisations and actors, as well as representatives of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Minerals Commission.
The engagement, sponsored by the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning was also to solicit for public inputs possibly, for the amendment.
Dr. Manteaw, a former Chairman of the Public Interest Accountability Committee (PIAC) regretted mineral royalties allocated to the Municipal and District Assemblies were regarded as recurrent expenditure, which had no direct benefits to the people.
PIAC is a statutory body with oversight responsibility of the management and use of the country’s petroleum revenue,
“The mineral royalties are for the citizenry and we must ensure the populace has direct benefits”, he said.
Dr. Manteaw said Act 893 as amended ought to consider punitive sanctions so as to protect ‘gross misuse’ of the nation’s petroleum revenue in the supreme interest of the nation.
He said it remains the collective responsibility of everybody, particularly civil society organisations and actors to ensure the judicious utilization of minerals revenue.
Source: GNA