Minister damns High Court ruling

The Deputy Minister of Environment, Science and Technology, Dr. Omane Boamah has flawed the ruling of the high Court which declared yesterday that, the ex-refinery differential component of the ex-pump prices of petroleum products by the National Petroleum Authority (NPA) and the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) is illegal and must be stopped. The NPA on June 5, 2009 imposed a tax component which Kwaku Kwarteng and his Development Data (DD) policy research and advocacy organization described as illegal and filled an application in court which was ruled in their favour. The court presided by Justice Patrick Bayerh ordered the NPA and TOR to publicly declare the amount of money accrued from the imposition of the illegal “ex-refinery differential” and pay same into the Consolidated Fund within four months. However, Dr. Omane Boamah in a panel discussion on Metro TV’s “Good Morning Ghana” programme said the ruling of the high court doesn’t stand and was confident the NPA will appeal against it. According to him, the NPA made it clear that the ex-refinery differential component is neither a tax nor a levy and that explains why they didn’t seek for parliamentary approval. He said about 250million dollars is spent by government every quarter of the year to subsidize fuel for the people and the ex-refinery differential component was a way of supporting government to cushion up the high cost involved. Mike Ocquaye Jnr, a Legal Practitioner and a member of the opposition NPP, also a panel member of the programme said the illegality by the NPA (government) started in June, 2009 and several letters were written to them to stop which they did not adhere to.

He said the NDC has been engaged in illegality for long and this must stop adding “you can fool some of the people some of the time but you can’t fool all the people all the time”.

The NPA by a confidential letter dated 5th June 2009, directed the Tema Oil Refinery to pay the differences between the true ex-refinery prices and false ex-refinery prices into the NPA’s bank accounts.

Per the arrangement, a gallon of diesel that should sell at GH? 4.15 ended up at GH? 5.09 while a gallon of petrol (GH? 4.77) was sold at GH? 5.06.