Duncan Amoah calls for a return to fuel price regulation after ‘failed’ price deregulation
Executive Director for the Chamber of Petroleum Consumers (COPEC), Duncan Amoah, has made calls for a return to petroleum price regulation seeing that the current petroleum price deregulation has failed to keep prices of petroleum products stable.
According to him, petroleum price deregulation has led to higher fuel prices and given recent trends in the international and domestic oil markets, Ghana is heading for a crisis.
“Deregulation has led to fuel price hitting GHS 13, we attempted to review it but we haven’t finished, and at this point we are getting into a crisis and if the authorities would sit down and try to find a certain framework that would work for at least for the next 6 months, that would really help.
“Price petroleum regulation might just be what we need now because we are not in normal times,” he stated speaking on the Business Edition of Joy News’ PM Express monitored by norvanreports.
His call for a return to petroleum price regulation was however, challenged by the Chief Executive Officer of Oil Marketing Company Petrosol, Michael Bozumbil, who was of the view that petroleum price regulation is still not needed.
“I would say petroleum price regulation is still not needed, petroleum price deregulation is not bad only that some aspects of it need to be properly addressed.
“Should we return to price regulation, you would see a lot of queues at the pumps, but under deregulation you don’t see that,” he remarked.
In an interview some months ago, Mr Amoah noted price deregulation has brought hardships in the lives of Ghanaians especially fuel consumers.
According to him, a lot of consideration did not go into the deregulation exercise, adding that government just took its hands off the final pricing at the pumps.
“It was just rolled out because government was tired and was choking on the legacy debt so the most immediate solution was to leave all the marketing companies. You bring your product, you set your own prices, if you make losses, I don’t owe you anything,” he stated.
Adding that, government has simply grown taxes on fuel price.
