PIAC urges GNPC to take a second look at its pricing policy

Mr Dennis Gyeyir, the Technical Officer of the Public Interest Accountability Committee (PIAC) has said the committee has found out that the price of the Tweneboa, Enyenra, Ntomme (TEN) crude for Ghana Group was lower than the estimated benchmark price.

He said the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) needed to take a second look at its pricing and marketing policy for TEN to eliminate the significant price difference from that of Jubilee.

Mr Gyeyir said this when he addressed the 13th PIAC forum on the committee’s Report on key findings and recommendations on the management of Ghana’s petroleum revenue for the year 2017 in Koforidua in the Eastern Region.

Representatives of various associations and the public such as; the Trade Union Congress, Ghana Association of Industries and Regional Coordinating Councils, among others, attended the forum.

Mr Gyeyir said the Ghana National Gas Company received raw gas worth $ 94,776,691.97 dollars from GNPC during the year under review for which payment was outstanding and Volta River Authority also received lean worth of $ 279,910,118.08 from GNPC, which has not been paid including an interest of $16,737,531.29.

He said other findings revealed that an amount of $13,518,852.98 was wrongfully paid into the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) account instead of Petroleum Holding Fund account, and that the committee had been assured that the situation would be rectified.

He called on the Ministry of Finance to provide guidelines to forestall similar occurrences and the PIAC had recommended that GRA undertook annual tax audit of the partners without delay as witnessed in the 2011 – 2015 tax audit of KOSMOS which was undertaken in 2016.

Mr Roland Affail Monney, the President of Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) who is a member of PIAC in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA )said the PIAC was a statutory committee established under section 56 of the Public Revenue Management in 2011 (Act 815 ).

It is aimed at providing space and platform for the public to debate on spending prospects and management of revenue to conform to development priorities as provided under section 21 (3).

He said the committee was mandated to monitor and evaluate compliance with the Act by government and relevant institutions in the management and the use of petroleum revenues and investments and noted that the public engagement programme would urge the committee to reach people responsible for dispensing resources for accountability.

Mr Richard K. Sambo, the Eastern Regional Coordinating Director on behalf of the Regional Minister commended the activities of PIAC and asked that the public took interest in the programme to make productive contributions to address some of the problems in the utilisation and the management of the petroleum revenue.

Participants at the forum urged civil society organisations to take other forms of monitoring and evaluation activities at the mining and the agriculture sectors since PIAC was mainly for petroleum revenues.