The Chief Executive Officer of the National Petroleum Authority (NPA), Moses Asaga has said the call for a reduction in fuel prices are justifiable but insisted that maintaining the prices will go a long way to ensure adequate supply during the yuletide.
[contextly_sidebar id=”hvbniikk2XavFx1Alt992cqBYcyXrKzF”]Government has been widely criticized for not reducing fuel prices in the country despite consistent reduction of crude in the international market.
A former boss of the NPA, John Attafuah has asked government must reduce the fuel prices because per “the NPA law, the authority is supposed to publish periodically the ex-refinery prices using the international world market prices,” he indicated.
Though Moses Asaga conceded that, “the crude oil prices have come down almost about 40 percent in the last three months,” he acknowledged that the reduction has not yet reflected in general fuel prices because government is not using the automatic price adjustment system.
According to him government incurred huge debts to the Bulk Oil Distribution Companies (BDCs) when the crude oil price increased in the international market.
He explained that “the situation is about liquidity between the BDCs and the commercial bank. One of the commitment we made is that we want to address the issue of the under recovery that was owed to the BDCs to the tune of 415 million in June and July.”
“So we are saying that the windfall that we are getting, we are using it to pay the arrears to the BDCs so that they will have some amount of liquidity to be able to open their LCs so that within the period of the festivity we do not want any excuse from BDC to say that because of the monies that are locked up with government they are unable to open LC and that is the rationale.”
He said “as part of the mandate of the NPA, we are supposed to make sure that there is constant flow of petroleum products in the system without much interruption.”
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By: Godwin Allotey Akweiteh/citifmonlin.com/Ghana
Follow @AlloteyGodwin