No civil society has been engaged on gold-for-oil barter policy – Expert

An energy expert, Kojo Poku, has stated that no civil society has been engaged so far on the gold-for-oil barter policy announced by Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia.

According to him, the announcement of the policy was premature as the initial discussions on the move at the National Petroleum Autotomy (NPA) had just begun.

Kojo Poku however noted that running policies with CSOs were a crucial part of its implementation thus the Vice-President should have waited it out before making the announcement.

“Policy credibility is very key. You can count the number of policies that the government has said they would do that civil society had come out to say that it is not possible, it is not going to happen that has happened. There is none,” he is quoted by 3news.com.

He also added: “I don’t even think you can come out with any. Government said they were going to do Agyapa, civil society said it wasn’t going to be possible and Agyapa was not done. GNPC said they were going to do Aker but we said it wasn’t going to be possible to do it and they couldn’t do Aker. PDS, we said it wasn’t going to last, it did not last.

He continued, .".We in civil society have a track record in analyzing government policies and telling government that if we do not do extensive and proper engagement, this policy will not work and they do not listen, they just go ahead."

“This seems to be one of those policies. I don’t know who in the energy sector that Dr Amin Antah [Deputy Minister of Energy] said they have engaged but I can assure you that they have not engaged anyone within our space, within the civil society space,” Kojo Poku stressed .

The Energy expert further pointed out that it was surprising to see the announcement made by Vice President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia.

“I speak to quite a number of them and none of them has been engaged. My little investigation I have done shows that it was an initial discussion at the NPA level and nobody knows why it ended up on the Facebook page of the Vice President,” he noted.

The Vice President in a Facebook post announced that “Government is negotiating a new policy regime where our gold (rather than our US dollar reserves) will be used to buy oil products. The barter of sustainably mined gold for oil is one of the most important economic policy changes in Ghana since its independence.

“The barter of gold for oil represents a major structural change. My thanks to the Ministers for Lands and Natural Resources, Energy, and Finance, Precious Minerals Marketing Company, The Ghana Chamber of Mines, and the Governor of the Bank of Ghana for their supportive work on this new policy. We expect this new framework to be fully operational by the end of the first quarter of 2023,” he added.

Meanwhile, Dubai oil firm ENOC has denied being in talks with Ghana on the gold for oil barter arrangement.

SSD/MA