General News of Wednesday, 7 January 2015
Source: peacefmonline.com
National Youth Organizer of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), Sammy Awuku has expressed discontent at the betrayal of Ghanaians by the Mahama-led administration with the automatic adjustment formula.
According to him, with the current downward trend of crude oil price on the world market, the NDC government has cheated Ghanaians with its meager 10 percent reduction of the fuel prices considering that Ghanaians were asked to embrace the upward adjustment of the crude oil price when the world market price shot up.
Speaking on Oman Fm’s National Agenda Morning Show, Sammy Awuku wondered why with the existence of oil production in the country and the drastic reduction of crude oil prices on the World market, Ghanaians under the NDC government have to suffer the hardship of high fuel prices.
“The automatic adjustment formula is not working because when the crude oil price shot up, Ghanaians were told to embrace the price hike which they did despite their agitations. Now, the crude oil price has reduced drastically in the world market and Ghana is now oil a producer; but fuel price is still expensive and the only thing they could do was to reduce the price by 10% which is only coins…to me, that in itself is a betrayal of the automatic adjustment formula; we should see a drastic reduction in fuel price,” he fumed.
Addressing the reason given by the National Petroleum Authority (NPA) for the 10 percent reduction, Sammy Awuku said the debt was incurred due to government’s mismanagement of the economy which led to the depreciation of the cedi which cause the oil distribution companies to suffer from foreign losses.
He has, however, asked the NPA to come out with a breakdown of the pricing, since it is still not clear to Ghanaians after the NDC government in 2009 announced that all the debts at the Tema Oil Refinery had been paid.