Ranking Member on Energy Committee in Parliament, John Jinapor has said government should stop deceiving Ghanaians with its ‘so-called’ procurement of affordable fuel for the Ghanaian market with Ghana’s gold.
According to him, the deal in its current form is inherent with losses, inefficiencies and will affect the country’s debt.
“Government should stop deceiving us. If Ghana is so broke, our reserves have been so depleted that we do not have dollars and so we want to do an arrangement in order to use these methods to buy fuel, fair enough, but who will sell fuel cheaper to you?” he told Evans Mensah on Newsnight on Tuesday.
He said the Parliamentary Select Committee on Mines and Energy has not been fully briefed on this Gold for Oil deal.
John Jinapor noted that government cannot be successful with its plans of buying cheaper fuel from the international market since there is no cheaper fuel on the market.
“Nobody in this world will sell his oil to you for a cheaper price than the normal price.”
He argued that whatever ounces of gold the government intends to use for oil must be converted to meet the price of a barrel of oil since Gold is a commodity and not currency.
He said the government should rather make a case that the deal is to make room for the inadequate foreign currencies and not for cheaper fuel.
“This issue of trying to confiscate the issue and deceive us, it will not work because if the oil has a price and gold has a price, all you ought to do is to do a matching order and determine the price of oil and say how much compared to the price of gold in terms of oil of barrels can I get? So where is that barter?” he explained.
Meanwhile, the Deputy Lands and Natural Resources Minister, Mireku Duker has said the first consignment of affordable fuel under the deal will arrive next week.
Mr. Duker said this after a meeting with the Chamber of Mines on Tuesday at which the Gold for oil deal was discussed.
Answering a question by journalists on when the first consignment is expected to arrive in the country, he said “we are thinking of next week if I’m not exaggerating .”
The volume of the low cost fuel he noted is yet to be determined.
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