Ghana’s petroleum revenue watchdog has quietly surfaced one of the most compelling arguments in the country’s oil money debate a single infrastructure investment made nearly a decade ago that has been paying the state back ever since, while hundreds of millions more sit untouched in a suspense account.
The Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC) revealed in its 2025 Annual Report, launched in Accra on Wednesday, April 8, that a US$30 million investment of Annual Budget Funding Amount (ABFA) oil revenues by the Ghana Infrastructure Investment Fund (GIIF) into the construction of Accra International Airport’s Terminal 3 in 2016 has generated US$17.9 million in interest and fees between 2017 and 2025, close to 60 percent of the original capital returned in under nine years.
The figure, buried in a report dominated by production decline headlines, exposes a strategic question that few have asked directly: if Ghana knows what a well-placed oil revenue investment looks like, why has it struggled to repeat the model?
The contrast is stark. US$434.55 million in ABFA receipts was transferred by the Ministry of Finance into a special purpose vehicle set up by GIIF for the Accra-Kumasi Expressway, and the funds are currently being held in a suspense account at the Bank of Ghana pending feasibility studies with no contractor named, no contract sum disclosed, and no timeline confirmed. PIAC Chairman Richard Ellimah flagged the arrangement as raising legal compliance concerns, even as he said the committee was not opposed to infrastructure investment in principle.
The committee raised red flags over the transfer, noting that the government has yet to disclose the project scope, contractor details, contract sum, or payments made, raising transparency concerns over one of the government’s flagship infrastructure projects.
The Terminal 3 investment stands as the clearest evidence that petroleum revenues, when channelled into assets that generate user fees and commercial returns, can compound the state’s income even as raw crude output falls. Ghana’s oil production has now declined for six consecutive years, dropping from a peak of 71.44 million barrels in 2019 to 37.3 million barrels in 2025, with petroleum receipts collapsing 43 percent year-on-year to US$770.27 million.
Against that backdrop, the question of whether idle ABFA funds could be working harder in revenue-generating assets, toll roads, port facilities, energy infrastructure is no longer academic.
PIAC is calling on the government to make provision in the Petroleum Revenue Management Act (PRMA) for the transfer of ABFA intended for the Big Push policy to GIIF to ensure effective legal compliance. The committee’s position is not that the Accra-Kumasi Expressway is the wrong project, but that the money must move within a clear legal framework, with full public accountability attached.
The broader message in the 2025 report is that Ghana is running out of time to make its remaining oil revenues work harder. With cumulative production since 2010 now standing at 694 million barrels and no new petroleum agreement signed since 2018, the window for converting oil wealth into lasting economic infrastructure is narrowing.
