Energy Ministry's response to hike in fuel prices 'useless' - Kwesi Pratt

Editor of the Insight Newspaper Kwesi Pratt says the response given by the Deputy Minister of energy in charge of petroleum Dr Mohammed Anim Adam to the recent hike in petroleum products in the country is “useless”.

Kwesi Pratt said regulatory regimes are established by government and taxes placed on petroleum products are decided on by government before parliament approves it, so government has no excuse to say they have no control over the hike in prices of petroleum products.

At a news conference in Accra on Wednesday, September 27, Deputy Minister of energy in charge of petroleum Dr Mohammed Anim Adam said government and the National Petroleum Authority [NPA] as a regulatory body have no responsibility for fixing oil prices on the market.

According to him, market forces such as demand, supply, forex, depreciation of the cedi and international crude oil prices affect the pricing of petroleum in the country.

The prices of fuel products are soaring in the country with petroleum hitting GHS20 per gallon. Most drivers are complaining about the hike in the product.

Reacting to the comment of the deputy minister of Radio Gold’s “Alhaji&Alhaji”, Kwesi Pratt said he believes firmly that there is something that can be done about what he described as unreasonable and unprecedented hike in fuel prices.

He said he has been in meeting with most political leaders in which they discussed how to calculate fuel prices and how to reduce it so no politician can say they don’t know how to reduce the price of petrol.

Kwesi Pratt noted increasing fuel prices is a lazy way to deal with revenue shortfall problems as everybody will at all cost buy fuel.

He further questioned the NPP government on whether or not they were not aware of the market forces before promising Ghanaians to reduce fuel prices or they got to power before they knew about the market forces.