Petroleum prices must go up - Osafo-Maafo

Mr. Yaw Osafo-Maafo, Minister of Finance has again stressed the urgent need to review petroleum prices upwards to reflect existing trends in the sector.

Presenting the state of the economy at the on-going NPP National Delegates Conference at Sekondi on Saturday, the Minister made it clear that the government could no longer continue to carry the huge petroleum debts on the national budget.

The Tema Oil Refinery (TOR), he said has an accumulated debt of more than three point five trillion cedis and this amount continues to increase at an average monthly rate of 50 billion cedis a month.

Osafo-Maafo said, in addition, the accumulated debts of TOR are crippling the operations of the Ghana Commercial Bank (GCB) and the adverse implications of this for the banking sector could be underestimated.

"Those who have been subsidised must share the burden of liquidating this debt and pay the appropriate price ", the Finance Minister said. He said a lot had been achieved within the first two years of the NPP administration and the next two years would be spent to consolidate the gains made so far.

On the macroeconomic front, Mr. Osafo-Maafo said there are two main issues, which need to be addressed, and one of them is petroleum pricing. The other is how to generate enough private capital to implement the government's development agenda, the Minister said, adding that 75 per cent domestic revenue is spent on wages and debt servicing.

He assured the people that the government in the next budget would look for innovative ways to generate more resources to spend on priority areas. Major Courage Quashigah (RTD), Minister of Food and Agriculture, Nana Addo Dankwa Akuffo-Addo, Attorney General and Minister of Justice and Haruna Esseku, National Chairman of the NPP were among those who addressed the conference.