- US$60m Fuel Demurrage Bill Exposes Costly Cracks in Port Logistics – CUTS International
Ghana’s petroleum supply chain is carrying a largely hidden cost that is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore: nearly US$60m paid in demurrage to shipping lines last year because of delays in discharging finished petroleum products at the country’s ports.
The figure was disclosed by Appiah Adomako Kusi, West African Regional Director of CUTS International, and places a sizeable monetary value on inefficiencies that extend well beyond the shipping industry, speaking on Eye on Port on Metro TV.
It also raises a broader economic question about how much Ghana is paying simply because imported goods are spending too much time waiting to enter the economy.
“Last year close to about US$60 million was paid as demurrage to shipping lines because of the delays it takes for these shipping vessels to be able to unload the finished products into the country,” Mr Adomako Kusi said.
Demurrage is effectively the price paid when a vessel remains at anchorage or cannot discharge within an agreed period, meaning importers incur additional costs without receiving any extra cargo or economic value.
For an economy heavily dependent on imported refined petroleum products, the charge is not merely a shipping expense but a direct cost of inefficiency in the logistics system.
That distinction matters because Ghana’s fuel market is already exposed to several forces it cannot fully control. International crude prices, refined-product prices, exchange-rate movements and domestic taxes all influence what consumers ultimately pay at the pump, while geopolitical disruptions can rapidly alter the cost of imported energy.
Demurrage adds another layer, but unlike global oil prices, it is generated within Ghana’s own logistics chain.
The problem has become more consequential as petroleum prices have come under renewed pressure in September. The document notes projected increases of about 9.63% for petrol and 6.97% for diesel during the second September pricing window, even as government sought to limit how much of the global increase reached domestic consumers.
Against that backdrop, a US$60mn demurrage bill highlights a category of fuel cost that cannot be blamed on global markets and therefore demands a different policy response.
Ghana cannot determine the global price of crude oil, control geopolitical tensions or dictate the price of imported refined products. It can, however, influence how efficiently vessels are received, berthed and discharged, how quickly products enter storage facilities and how effectively public agencies and private operators coordinate their activities.
That makes port efficiency not merely an operational issue but an economic-policy variable capable of affecting costs across the fuel market.
Mr Adomako Kusi argues that the problem is broader than petroleum. He pointed to similar delays affecting clinker imports and complaints from freight forwarders about cargo clearance at the airport, suggesting that Ghana may be dealing with a systemic logistics problem rather than an isolated failure in one commodity chain.
Recent congestion at Tema Port has also generated heavy demurrage costs for the cement sector, with industry estimates cited in the document putting clinker-related charges at between US$45m and US$50m in the first eight months of 2026.
The economics of those delays is straightforward. A vessel waiting to berth does not produce additional output for Ghana, yet importers continue to accumulate charges, which must eventually be absorbed somewhere within the supply chain.
Those costs can squeeze importer margins, raise manufacturers’ production expenses, increase distributors’ operating costs or eventually be passed on to consumers through higher prices.
For Bulk Distribution Companies, prolonged discharge delays can also increase financing costs and tie up working capital.
Capital committed to cargo sitting offshore remains unavailable for other business uses, while shipowners recover the opportunity cost of immobilised vessels through demurrage charges.
Even when competitive pressures prevent the full cost from being passed immediately to consumers, persistent inefficiency can weaken margins and reduce companies’ ability to invest elsewhere.
The wider macroeconomic concern is that fuel is not an ordinary commodity. It is an input into transport, agriculture, manufacturing, construction, distribution and almost every activity that depends on mobility or energy, meaning inefficiency at the point of import can spread through the wider economy.
A sustained increase in petroleum logistics costs therefore has the potential to create a second-order inflationary effect even before other global price pressures are taken into account.
That makes the US$60m figure more important than a single industry statistic. It raises the question of how much Ghanaian businesses and households are paying each year for delays that may be reduced through better berth utilisation, vessel scheduling, storage planning, cargo clearance and coordination among state agencies and private operators.
Mr Adomako Kusi has argued that logistics should be treated as an efficiency and engineering challenge rather than being approached only through regulation.
The issue also bears directly on Ghana’s ambitions to position itself as a regional commercial and logistics hub. Ports compete not only on physical infrastructure but on the speed, predictability and cost with which cargo moves through them, and persistent delays weaken the competitiveness of the entire trading system.
A country seeking to attract transit trade, investment and regional distribution business cannot afford for avoidable waiting time to become a structural surcharge on commerce.
For Ghana, the policy challenge is therefore unusually clear. The country cannot insulate itself completely from oil-price shocks, currency volatility or global shipping disruptions, but it can reduce the domestic inefficiencies that amplify those shocks once cargo reaches its shores.
If the US$60mn demurrage bill reflects recurring bottlenecks rather than an exceptional year, then the real cost is not simply money paid to shipping lines but economic value lost through time, capital and avoidable friction.
The danger is that Ghanaian consumers and businesses end up paying twice: first for the imported product and then again for the delays involved in bringing it into the country.
That is why the demurrage problem should be treated less as a technical port complaint and more as a competitiveness and inflation issue requiring measurable performance targets and accountability.
Reducing waiting time may not generate the political visibility of a new terminal or major infrastructure project, but it could remove millions of dollars in avoidable cost from the economy every year.
