"IFC" Loan Send Fuel Prices High

THE National Democratic Congress (NDC) flagbearer and likely 2005 President, Professor John Evans Atta-Mills has stated that the recent outrageous petroleum price increases announced by the NPP Government were directly attributable to the failure of the NPP to obtain the farcical "IFC" loan, which it spent the whole of 2002 chasing.

He recalled that in announcing the NPP Government's decision not to pursue the IFC loan last year, Minister of Finance Yaw Osafo-Maafo served notice that the loss of that facility would entail recourse to domestic resource mobilisation.

The increased petroleum prices appear to be one such recourse. In his first reaction to the increases contained in a Press Statement issued last Thursday, Professor Mills explained that given that the IMF had recommended only a 30%! increase in the ex-refinery price to achieve import parity, which would have translated into a 25% increase in the ex-pump price, one was at a loss as to where the NPP's near-100% increase came from.

Professor Mills sympathised with the people of Ghana who have to bear the pain that go with the level of the announced increases and described as unfortunate the Government's propaganda efforts to attribute the increase to the TOR debt, only a portion of which was accumulated in the NDC era.

According to Professor Mills, there are hidden taxes and other revenue items in the price that can be adjusted to bring the prices down and make them a little more affordable for the ordinary Ghanaian. Professor Mills decried the insensitivity that the announced prices showed to the poor, the marginalized and the disadvantaged, and bemoaned the likely fate of rural dwellers, the fishing industry and the v! arious afforestation and reforestation programmes.

The NDC fla gbearer called on the NPP Government to roll back on the announced price increases and get into discussions with the other political party leaders with a view to arriving at realistic but affordable prices.

He reminded the NPP Government of what the NDC did in 1995 when, faced with public protests over the VAT, it suspended its implementation, went back to the drawing board and came back with a repackaged and more acceptable VAT.

In a veiled hint at a likely NDC support of any demonstrations against the new fuel prices, Professor Atta-Mills warned that the new prices could not be sustained and that the Government should not wait for public manifestation of discontent before it does what is economically prudent, socially equitable and politically acceptable.