Director of Policy and Research at Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP), John Peter Amewu, has described as premature, calls for the Ghana Heritage Fund to be spent now.<\/p>\n
General Secretary of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC), Johnson Asiedu Nketia, in an interview with\u00a0<\/b>Citi <\/i>Business News<\/strong>\u00a0<\/b>during the May Day celebrations proposed that government should make use of the oil revenue reserved for future generations in the Ghana Heritage Fund to solve Ghana\u2019s problems.<\/p>\n \u201cIn this current situation that we find ourselves in, it doesn\u2019t make economic sense to be keeping any money called Heritage Funds,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n But Mr. Amewu in an interview on the\u00a0<\/b>Citi Breakfast Show<\/strong>\u00a0<\/b>on Monday said, the only way government can have access to the Ghana Heritage Fund is to amend the law that set up the fund.<\/p>\n \u201cGoing forward, the law that stipulates the Heritage Fund has some framework under which this fund should be utilized. It is important as a country to go back to the law and amend it if we think we need to spend the money,\u201d he opined.<\/p>\n He also stated that the proposal that the Ghana Heritage Fund be utilized now because the return on the investment of the Fund is not yielding \u201canything positive\u201d is not acceptable.<\/p>\n \u201cGeneral Mosquito [Johnson Asiedu Nketia] might have his own genuine consent in coming up with such a statement but, unfortunately, in a real world it doesn\u2019t work like that,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Mr. Amewu however agreed with the suggestions that some of the money being invested in foreign countries be invested locally saying, \u201cwe are investing the resources in qualified instrument outside the Republic of Ghana. It is true that we need some of that money to be invested locally; that again calls for some amendment of the law to be done.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt is important to think of what percentage of that money to be invested locally,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n He argued again that there is no value for money on projects that petroleum resources have been spent on over the years.<\/p>\n ACEP\u2019s Director of Policy and Research explained that \u201cthere is no value for money on projects that we have spent our oil resources on; the cost value reconciliation indicators of our expenditure priority is not any good thing to talk about.<\/p>\n If you take Ghana as country for example, our spending priorities over the last three years are nothing good to talk about. We spend our petroleum resources on infrastructure development; as I speak now there is no single project that you can pin-point that our petroleum resources have been spent on,\u201d he noted.<\/p>\n The Ghana Heritage Fund was set up for the purpose of inter-generational equity.<\/p>\n Parliament under the Petroleum Management Revenue Act 2010 passed the law to provide an endowment to support development for future generations when petroleum reserves have been depleted.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n By: Evans Effah\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Director of Policy and Research at Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP), John Peter Amewu, has described as premature, calls for the Ghana Heritage Fund to be spent now. General Secretary of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC), Johnson Asiedu Nketia, in an interview with\u00a0Citi Business News\u00a0during the May Day celebrations proposed that government should […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":16504,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[43,38],"yoast_head":"\n