Alhassan Tampuli
The National Petroleum Authority (NPA) says certain measures it introduced helped to curb smuggling of products from 30 million litres last year to two million litres as at August, this year.
This, according to the NPA, represented about 93 per cent decline and saved Ghana millions of cedis which would have slipped into private pockets.
Hassan Tampuli, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the NPA, who made this known at a meeting of stakeholders in the petroleum downstream sector in Accra, lauded the collaboration between his outfit and the security agencies which he said helped to impound 43 bulk road vehicles and canoes for smuggling petroleum products.
He said some of the canoes impounded were designed to carry about one million tonnes of fuel, but a canoe carried about 120,000 litres of petroleum products.
The petroleum products, he said, had been confiscated by his outfit.
He said all relevant taxes and levies have since been paid to the government, while the impounded canoes have been burnt to deter others.
He revealed that in June, this year a committee was constituted to review the cases and draw guidelines to curb illegal fuel activities, as well as propose measures for the disposal of all confiscated canoes and vehicles.
In addition, Mr Tampuli said NPA was bent on offering protection to genuine businesses in the industry and assured that it would work with all stakeholders to expose fraudulent businesses which sabotaged the industry.
He announced that the high failure rate among retail stations, which respectively averaged 6.2 per cent and 4.9 per cent in 2016 and 2017 had been reduced to less than one per cent as at July this year due to the stringent measures it instituted.
He said the Authority has discovered that some petroleum products from Togo meant for transit to Mali were being dumped in Sankase and Tatale in the northern, and assured that it would collaborate with the security agencies to arrest the perpetrators.
The NCA CEO said the second petroleum pricing window in October saw upward adjustment in the prices of petroleum products, which sparked public outcry, and therefore entreated players in the industry to educate and sensitise the public to understand the mechanisms of a deregulated market.
As a result of the implementation of the price deregulation policy in July 2015, he said the responsibility of setting ex-pump prices of petroleum products shifted from the NPA to petroleum service providers- Bulk Oil Distribution Companies (BDCs) and Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs).
Mr. Tampuli said petroleum products whose prices were still determined by the NPA included residual fuel oil, pre-mix fuel, aviation fuel, gas oil for the mines, marine gas oil and gas oil rig.
He said prior to the implementation of the price regulation in 2015, the Authority was mandated by the Regulation 14 of L.I 2186 to issue to the petroleum service providers the petroleum product price build-up sourced from prescribed petroleum pricing formula and published same for every pricing window in the gazette and at least two national dailies.