The African Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP) has called for the scrapping off of the capacity building allocation component of oil revenue expenditure.
[contextly_sidebar id=”58aWEcFeZ7e9n8PYnsc2naEyGXTJotab”]The call follows what ACEP refers to as the government’s inability to disclose fully the specific sectors that benefit from the capacity building allocation of oil revenues.
[contextly_sidebar id=”0v1ve7aLzVKT1sQHCAwZJr3X04OfjJP4″]The 2016 budget statement and economic policy stated that government spent an estimated 135 million Ghana cedis against an estimated 217 million Ghana cedis for the first nine months of 2015.
Although the details showed that commitments were made to education, Benjamin Boakye, who is Deputy Executive Director of ACEP, believes previous reports which cited some government agencies as beneficiaries shrouds the purpose for the capacity building allocation.
“Until the list came out in the 2014 petroleum report, nobody knew exactly where that capacity building money went to and when it came out, we were baffled at some of the elements that were in there including NADMO and all. I think that we can scrap the capacity building allocation and give that to education because there is no other institution that builds capacity more than the education sector” He argued.
Benjamin Boakye added, “If we have education, why don’t we say we are allocating oil revenues to that sector rather than the ambiguous capacity building term that continues to receive significant revenues and it is very difficult to track exactly what that revenue is doing.”
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By: Pius Amihere Eduku/Citifmonline.com/Ghana