The price of fuel is expected to fall by GH¢1 in the coming days as Ghana prepares to take delivery of four oil consignments through the gold-for-oil programme.
This was announced by the Managing Director of Bulk Oil Storage and Transportation Company Limited (BOST), Mr Edwin Provencal.
He was speaking on Asaase Radio on Monday, 13 February 2023, where he indicated that BOST is working with the National Petroleum Authority (NPA) to increase these consignments.
“I can tell you for a fact that we’re working on the pricing with NPA and we should expect GHC1 reduction at the pump for gasoline,” Mr Provencal said.
He said BOST will get the needed credibility, in the long-term, through the gold-for-oil policy.
He said the policy will also help BOST to solve some challenges when it comes to building a strategic reserve of stocks of petroleum products for the country.
“We are also mandated to build a strategic reserve of stocks of petroleum products to meet a minimum of six weeks of national consumption,” he notrd, adding: “This, we haven’t done too well for obvious reasons. This is because we didn’t have the men and the money,” Mr Provencal noted.
He said: “Hopefully, this programme [gold for oil] will help us solve some of these challenges in the long term.”
He added: “We used to have open credit account supplies and this means that they give you the product, after a while, you pay them without any instrument and because of the past, we abused it and we went into debt.”
“So, we lost credibility in the market place,” he explained.
“We are restoring that credibility. And we believe strongly that this programme [gold for oil], if it runs for a while, will give us that credibility,” he added.
Ghana has so far received 41,000 metric tonnes of oil through the programme announced by Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia, who said: “It will fundamentally change our balance of payments and significantly reduce the persistent depreciation of our currency.”
