Ghana's petroleum sector making huge gains - NPA

Ghana's petroleum sector is making significant gains, Mr Alhassan Tampule, the Chief Executive Officer of the National Petroleum Authority (NPA) said on Monday.

Despite that, prices at the international market remains at the highest level in the past four years and the country has the lowest pricing of petroleum products in the sub-Saharan Africa, apart from Nigeria and Togo

This is making huge impact on the economy as neighbouring countries such as Mali and Burkina Faso buy petroleum products from Ghana.

Interacting with section of the media in Sunyani as part of his nationwide tour, Mr Tampule said the country had recorded significant increase in the storage of her petroleum products.

Ghana, he added was in a comfortable lead in the affordability of petroleum products, citing that the county had a storage of over 33 million litres of diesel and13 million litres of petrol at the Bolgatanga depot alone.

Mr Tampule pointed out that the deregulation policy introduced by the NPA in 2015 had made useful impact in the petroleum sector saying the policy had enabled the government to offset the chunk of its debts that were accrued as a result of government subsidy to petroleum products in the country.

But, with the full deregulation policy, the government has no control or responsibility to determine prices of petroleum products in the country.

Mr Tampule said the NPA had the responsible to set indicative prices for the products and monitor to ensure that the various petroleum selling outlets sell their products within the range.

Exchange rates, taxes, levies and margins remained key indicators and determinants for price setting in the petroleum sector, but the NPA Chief Executive added that because the cedi had made strong gains over the dollar in the past week, there was the possibility of price stability.