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Ghana got $900 million from oil in 2014, over $84 million ‘missing’
Ghana earned more than $900million from the oil and gas industry in 2014, a report on the operations of the extractive industry has revealed.
However, an amount of $84,382,088 could not be accounted for as government could not verify receiving such revenue from the oil and gas companies, the report added.
The report, which was prepared by the Ghana Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (GHEITI), assessed government’s revenue stream in the oil and gas industry and the disbursement of revenue into the various sectors of the economy.
The report blamed Anadarko WCTP Limited for failing to make the payments of the oil and gas revenue to the state.
“With the exception of Anadarko WCTP Limited, all oil and gas companies that made payments in 2014 reported to the GHEITI,” the report said.
In 2014, “a total of 37,201,691 barrels (BBLS) of crude oil and 55,758.04 Million Standard Cubic Feet (MMSCF) of natural gas was produced from the Jubilee field. Also, 79,602 barrels of crude oil was produced from the Saltpond field. This brought total crude oil produced in the country to 37,281,293 BBLS” the report indicated.
The sector’s contribution to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) slowed from 8.2% in the 2013 to 7.25% in 2014, this was still below the 7.7% contribution from the sector to the GDP in 2012.
The report, however, called for more transparency on the part of government and the various oil and gas companies operating in the country with regards to providing information on the performance of the Ghana petroleum funds (GPF) and the crude oil lifting, respectively.
It said though Section(1)c of the Petroleum Revenue Management Act 815 states that the “Investment Advisory Committee shall develop for the Minister of Finance as part of the investment guidelines, the benchmark portfolio, the desired returns from and the associated risks of the GPF and subsequently the Ghana Petroleum Wealth Fund taking into consideration the investment guidelines used by the Bank of Ghana for investments of a similar nature,” no benchmark returns have been developed by the Investment Advisory Committee and the BOG measurement on the performance of the funds were not consistent of Act 815.
It, therefore, called for the establishment of the investment guide to effectively monitor the performances of the GPF.
Also, the report called on the minister to provide detailed information on the stages of implementation of the various developmental projects funded by the Annual Budget Funding Amount (ABFA).
The ABFA is a predetermined percentage of the Benchmark Revenue but the actual allocation is determined by the Minister of Finance and approved by Parliament.
Currently, the ABFA covers four key priority areas namely, Roads and other infrastructure, agriculture modernization, expenditure and amortization of loans for oil and gas infrastructure, and capacity building including oil and gas.
By Nii Okai Tetteh|Onua 95.1FM|tv3network.com
