Christmas present for Ghana: Fuel prices to go up today

• Posted on December 24, 2015
• by Nana Kwesi Coomson
• Comment

Prices of petroleum products are expected to go up from today with the passage of the Energy Sector Levies Act, 2015 by Parliament yesterday.

The act seeks to realign petroleum related taxes by adjusting some of the levies and abolishing others.

The rationalisation has cost implications on the ex-pump price of petroleum products which will be announced today.

Impact on petroleum prices

Using the crude oil price of $48 per barrel, with the introduction of the new levies, premium petrol is expected to go up by 5.8 per cent and gas oil by 2.90 per cent.

The Chairman of the Finance Committee of Parliament, Mr James Klutse Avedzi, however, told the House that since oil prices were pegged at $48 to determine the new levies, the world price of oil had further declined.

This means that at a lower world price, the adjustment is likely to be downwards.

Background

Mr Avedzi said the energy sector was currently faced with several challenges which constrained the effective functioning of the sector.

Foremost among those challenges, he said, was the issue of legacy debts.

“This has been a major drain on the energy sector and the magnitude of the debt overhang continues to weigh down heavily on the performance of the sector,” he said.

According to him, in the emerging gas era, there was the need to prudently coordinate energy sector resources to underpin the transformation agenda.

He said although there were several levies in the energy sector currently, not every one of them had reasonably achieved the original objective for which it was created.

The various energy sector debt recovery levies, in his view, needed to be consolidated to bring focus and efficiency in their utilisation and purpose along the energy value chain, particularly gas-to-power.

He intimated that it had, therefore, become imperative to restructure, rationalise and consolidate the various levies to address the current demands of the energy sector in a comprehensive and holistic manner.

-Graphic