GRi in Parliament Ghana 27 - 02 - 2001
Parliament does not fix fuel prices -- Asaga
Accra (Greater Accra) 27 Feb 2001
Mr Moses Asaga, Minority Spokesman for Finance and MP for Nabdam on Tuesday said the crafty way the government tried to rope in Parliament in its announcement of the fuel prices was to give legality to an area which does not fall within the purview of the legislature.
"From the history of Ghana, the Ghana National Petroleum Company (GNPC) used to fix petroleum prices and this was transferred to the management of Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) but for the last two years it was fixed by Bulk Oil Storage and Transport (BOST)", he told the GNA in Accra.
"We have never seen a situation where petroleum prices have been approved by parliament. They (NPP) want to pass the magnitude of being blamed by their constituents and the people of Ghana on their campaign messages of going to relieve them of their hardships on Parliament as if both the minority and the majority collaborated to fix the prices."
Speaking in an interview Mr Asaga said the actual increase would have been 25 per cent not the current 64 per cent which he described as untenable and indefensible.
"The suffering the current increases will inflict on Ghanaians will not be as severe as a 25 per cent increase," he said.
Crude oil price, he said has fallen on the international market from 32 to 26 dollars a barrel and based on that calculation alone there was no need to rush and increase the ex-pump price to that level.
Mr Asaga defended the former government's attempt to manage petroleum prices based on crediting terms of crude oil price on the international market and sourcing financing from offshore to be able to import crude oil against export earnings.
He said it was projected that cocoa price was going to see an upward trend so that the foreign exchange revenue would be used to cushion any shortfall in 1999 and 2000 which warranted certain increases in petroleum prices.
The former Deputy Finance Minister said: "our foreign exchange earning would have been able to support the importation of crude oil and therefore we could manage the domestic ex-pump prices."
What the increases sought to do was to use capital cost as a factor in determining the increment and not the operational cost.
Mr Asaga said TOR had undergone a capital cost rehabilitation and the debt incurred is on long and concessionary terms, which should not be recovered in fuel price increase at a go.
"If we have all agreed that part of the loan of TOR is not just operational cost but as a result of the rehabilitation of the refinery, we should be able to de-aggregate what is operational cost and what is capital cost. The capital cost should then not be used as a factor in fixing petroleum prices."
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