NPA begins review of petroleum deregulation policy
The price deregulation policy was aimed at eliminating government control from fuel prices and subsidies and allow market forces to determine pricing
The National Petroleum Authority (NPA) has began a review of the petroleum deregulation policy six years after its introduction.
It follows the formation of a committee with representatives from the NPA, Energy Ministry, Association of Oil Marketing Companies (AOMC), the Chamber of Petroleum Consumers (COPEC), and the Bulk Oil Distribution Companies (BDCs).
The committee which began work on last Tuesday is currently soliciting for inputs and proposals from civil society groups in the petroleum sector to facilitate it work.
The price deregulation policy was aimed at eliminating government control from fuel prices and subsidies and allow market forces to determine pricing.
Abass Ibrahim Tasunti, head of pricing at the National Petroleum Authority revealed this on the sidelines of a day’s training workshop for journalists on petroleum pricing on Wednesday (11 August) in Accra.
It is exactly six years since its implementation, it is only necessary and important that we review it and see whether it is achieving its purpose.
“So that committee started its work yesterday (Tuesday) and the goal of the committee is to generally review the policy and see if there are problems that have to be resolved.”
“Naturally with every policy its implementation will come with challenges and one of them is what we have mentioned price undercutting is one of the things we are looking at, so how we can put in measures to make sure that OMC;s and BDC’s are operating within the framework that they are supposed to work.”
The head of pricing at NPA, however, stated that all stakeholders have agreed that the policy has been helpful.
About policy
The Government of Ghana in June 2015 put in place a deregulation policy that had the expectation of allowing marketers and importers of petroleum products to set directly their own prices based on import parity costs, taxes and margins.
The policy has the primary objective of bringing an end to government subsidies on these products, which arises from exchange rate losses and consumer subsidies.
It was designed to allow downstream companies to be profitable and is based on global commodity prices and the value of the cedi.
Fred Dzakpata
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