Address fuel smuggling, cylinder recirculation and petroleum price hikes issues – Mustapha Hamid told

The newly appointed Chief Executive of the National Petroleum Authority, Dr Mustapha Hamid has been admonished to prioritize resolving teething issues in the petroleum downstream sector.

A number of these issues, the Institute for Energy Security (IES) believes are with regards to fuel smuggling, cylinder recirculation and the continuous rise in fuel prices at the pumps.

Executive Director of the IES, Nana Amoasi VII reacting to Dr Hamid’s appointment said a level playing field must be created to ensure that all fuel importers and marketers adopt the best practices.

“Over the last few years, we’ve heard of incidence of fuel smuggling. When fuel is smuggled, it takes away the needed revenue from the government. So as a supervisor, NPA has a lot of work to do to block all leakages and create a level playing field for all fuel importers and marketers. The next thing is the cylinder recirculation model, which they tried implementing some years back.”

We’ve not seen any clear plan. We would advise that they take it off the table as it is deterring investments and disrupting planning for these LPG marketers.”

“The next has been the consistent, persistent increase in the price of fuel, and we find that the levies and margins supervised by the NPA contribute to the high cost of fuel in the country. Levies and margins make up about 40% of the price of a litre of petrol diesel and the other products, which affects the price of goods and services and ends up hurting the same economy you want to uplift. Adulteration of products on the markets and poor quality of service by Oil Marketing Companies,” he explained.

Nana Amoasi VII said this in an interaction with Citi Business News monitored by GhanaWeb.

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo in a letter recently announced the appointment of Dr Mustapha Hamid as Chief Executive Officer of the National Petroleum Authority.

According to details of his appointment via a letter dated 17 June 2021, Dr. Hamid is to assume duties as NPA CEO from 1 July 2021 and is expected to oversee all operations in the country’s downstream petroleum sector which primarily deals with regulation.

Dr Hamid comes to the role after the former Chief Executive of the Authority Hassan Tampuli was elected as Member of Parliament for Gushegu constituency in the Northern Region.