His Excellency President John Evans Atta Mills on Friday, January 7th, rebuffed calls for him to say sorry to Ghanaians for reneging on his promise to drastically decrease petroleum prices, and sardonically posited that the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) rather needs to render an unqualified apology to Ghanaians for saddling the country with 1.5billion debt toll.
Answering questions from Senior Editors and Media Owners in his office at the Osu Castle, the President, in a rhetorical manner, touchily sought to find out what the NPP did with the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) Debt Recovery Levy.
“Given the world crude price at the time (i.e is in 2008) I could reduce the prices. At the beginning of 2009, we met 1.488 billion GHC and that in 14 months the prices went up phenomenally…It is even a miracle that at this stage we can provide fuel to the country…the NPP needs to apologise to the people of Ghana for leaving the 1.488 billion debt toll…The country must make sure there is fiscal prudence for economic growth. We cannot continue to subsidize the fuel prices because we need money to develop the country…There is a TOR Debt Recovery Levy…what did they (NPP) do with the money?” he asked.
More coming up….