Upstream petroleum revenue increasing, Senyo Hosi
Ghana must invest in railway development
The Outgoing Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Chamber of Bulk Oil Distributors, Senyo Hosi, has stated that calls by Ghanaians for government to reduce petroleum prices are right.
He stated that consumers contribute, through taxes on petroleum products, massively to the country’s revenue base.
“I support the public because they’ve invested through the sector in government and government has actually failed woefully in investing back in systems that mitigate distress relative to petroleum prices. Now all the money you collected all this while, what key infrastructure investment have you made that will make a life for the consumer easier as far as their regular spend on petrol is concerned?
“See, we’re paying taxes every year, we’re raising 7, 8, 9 billion cedis from petroleum, the SPT was brought in and that’s even what? 2 or 3 billion every year because we said that upstream revenues were dropping so we were bringing that in.”
According to Senyo, the increase in the prices of petroleum products is resulting in an increase in revenue thus some taxes should be scrapped.
“Upstream revenues are not dropping, they’re going up because petroleum prices have gone up, so then consumers have every case why a tax like the SPT should be gone,” he said on JoyNews.
Senyo Hosi further indicated that the issue of fuel prices and transport being the major drivers of inflation could have been resolved by the government if petroleum revenue was used to develop Ghana’s road networks and railway systems.
“So, if you had a railway running through Adenta straight to Accra Central, a detour that goes to Circle; we had a rail that was running from Kasoa or Bawjiase or wherever all the way to Tema linking these two places; these are the nexus that you actually have because everyone will end up passing somewhere around Tetteh Quarshie or passing somewhere around Circle, something like that.
“Another one running all the way from Nsawam down to Circle, people can decide to park their car because people need transportation, they don’t need cars. We all don’t need cars, we need transportation; cars provide transportation. We have to be careful what we ask for,” he said.
“If I can’t afford fuel today to move my car, I should be able to have an alternative, decent kind of transportation. Do you really have that in Ghana? You don’t. The trotro will cost more than rail will. Have we invested in a rail network to be able to deliver that?” he added.
SSD/FNOQ
Senyo Hosi is the outgoing CEO of the Ghana CBOD