The first half year report on petroleum revenue management by the Public Interest and Accountability Committee, PIAC, has shown that Ghana Gas Company owes GNPC in excess of 260 million dollars for gas supplied.
The issue, PIAC says continues to impact GNPC’s operations as well as other allocations that are to be made per law.
The report looked at activities in the petroleum sector spanning January to June 2019.
The indebtedness of Ghana Gas to the GNPC due to non-payment of gas supplied remained a key issue.
According to PIAC, the figure had moved from 259.7 million dollars to about 264 million dollars between the six months period.
This means that about 4.2 million dollars was added to the debt.
Also, ECG owed GNPC to the tune of 12.1 million dollars for the same period.
“A major concern about the persistent non-payment of gas revenue is the deprivation of the funds to the ABFA, GPFs and GNGC,” portions of the report read.
This cyclical issue has been blamed on the failure of all key players to pay for gas supplied over the past years.
Total oil revenue reaches 440.6 million dollars
Meanwhile for the period, the government of Ghana through the GNPC, raked in total revenue of 440.6 million dollars.
This represents proceeds from the Jubilee, TEN and the Sankofa Gye Nyame oil fields.
The fields generated revenue of $188,347,738.47, $182,326,826.17 and $70,002,455.45 respectively.
Finance Ministry fails to submit ABFA data on-time
However, PIAC is alarmed that for the third time, the Ministry of Finance failed to submit data on the expenditure for the Annual Budget Funding Amount on time for inclusion in the report.
The ABFA is a component of the oil revenue that is channeled into the government’s coffers to support its budget.
The Committee noted that “The ABFA Expenditure data for the first half of 2019 report was received three months after the submission deadline, at which time the Report was ready for publication.”
Also for the period, total revenue from the sale of LPG stood at 9.75 million dollars compared to the 19.2 million dollars recorded in the same period last year.
This represents a 49 percent decrease in the revenue from the sale of gas.
PIAC nonetheless commended the government for waiving the price of gas for some industries in a bid to boost their growth.
“The decision to grant concessionary tariffs to industries bodes well for government’s industrialisation program as it has the tendency to reduce the cost of production,” PIAC remarked.
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