Head of Research at the Chamber of Petroleum Consumers (COPEC), Benjamin Nsiah, has said that the National Petroleum Authority (NPA) has become a burden to Ghanaians because of the continues increase in fuel prices.
In an interview with Happy FM’s Sefa Danquah on the ‘Epa Hoa Daben’ show, he explained: “We believe the NPA is becoming a burden on Ghanaians and will need to be reined in by the authorities from these arbitrary increases at a time as this when the harsh effects of Covid 19 on businesses and individuals are still raging”.
He shared that instead of the constant increase in fuel prices, the focus should be on blocking cartels involved in the smuggling of fuel which causes the country to lose billions of cedis in revenue.
“We object to any attempts to simply continue adding taxes and unnecessary margins on the fuel price build up which only adds to the increasing hardships on Ghanaians”, Benjamin said.
He thus called on authorities to withdraw any pending fuel price hike.
“We are by this calling on authorities to reign in the NPA to immediately withdraw these new add-ons as any attempts to force these unilateral increases by the NPA using the backdoor on Ghanaians will be steeply resisted”, he added.
Background
A press release from COPEC, sighted by Happy98.9FM read;
As though these two additions which have met a lot of public resistance and misgivings were not enough, the National Petroleum Authority unilaterally has also added another 17p cumulative to the already neck breaking 30p/litre and this is also expected to take effect from tomorrow together with the parliamentary approved 30p/litre.
What this means is that Ghanaians will have to cough up 47p/litre instead of the 30p/litre as approved from the budget.
Bost margin has been increased by the NPA by 100% from the current 6p/litre to 12p/litre, whiles UPPF has been increased from 27p to 30/litre, Primary Distribution Margin has been increased from 8p to 11p/litre and Fuels marking Margin has also been increased from 3p to 8p/litre
What this means is that the NPA unilaterally has added in excess of 3.2% on current pump prices in addition to the 5.5% new taxes from the 2021 budget. This leads to a fuel price increment of about 8.7% of current prices.
