Former boss of the National Petroleum Authority (NPA), John Attafuah is asking government should reduce the current prices of petroleum in the country.
He argues that there is no need for government or the NPA to maintain the current fuel prices in light of falling prices of crude in the international market prices.
[contextly_sidebar id=”Mn1wkDieTB7U4OzCMCIdY0GHgeCAG79I”]“The NPA law is clear, the authority is supposed to publish periodically the ex-refinery prices using the international world market prices.”
His comment follows a directive by the NPA which maintained petroleum prices in the country despite reduction in prices of crude in the international market.
Mr Attafuah argued that following the current international prices there should be a reduction of the country’s local prices adding that “ crude oil prices at 55.8, there is no reason why petrol should not be sold at GHC 1.93 per liter and also the exchange rate is GHC 3.20 for the NPA,so whatever equation you use then something has to gain.”
“It is said that import prices should be published regularly and import clarity means you cannot interfere with the figures. So whatever cost that you may have is your import clarity price is the price you also expect the refinery to match,” he said.
He added that if the government should go by the international formula that means they should reduce the petroleum prices adding “as far as the ex-refinery is concerned, you can’t do anything and if that is what we are going by since June there is absolutely no reason why the authority should not reduce prices.”
He said if the government was not planning to reduce the prices it should not have disclosed the automatic pricing mechanism formular.
“When it was going up nobody should have told us that we are going up and we are using an automatic pricing mechanism, so if we use this formula that they give us, there is no reason why petroleum petrol should not be Ghc 8.75 per gallon.”
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By: Patricia Conteh/citifmonline.com/Ghana