Parliament of Ghana
The Speaker of Parliament, Prof. Mike Oquaye, was forced to suspend yesterday’s sitting temporarily before the substantive debate on the 2020 Budget began after the Minority Chief Whip, Mohammed Muntaka Mubarak, raised the issue of low patronage of the debate by members and the absence of the Finance Minister to listen to the debate.
The Minority Chief Whip who was obviously worried about the situation said members of the House, especially the Majority members, must attach seriousness to the debate and scrutiny of the government of the day’s budget to ensure that the budget is approved.
The Speaker, who has also been reminding members of the need to always be present in Parliament and do the work for which they were voted for, expressed worry over the low attendance at the beginning of the debate and consequently suspended it to allow for more members to be present before it began.
When the House was constituted and the debate began on the energy sector, the Deputy Minister of Energy in charge of Petroleum, Dr. Mohammed Amin Anta, said that a major discovery had been made by a Ghanaian company by name Springfield in the upstream area as a result of government’s determination to encourage local content participation in the oil sector.
He said the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government was also determined to increase oil production from 200,000 barrels per day to 350,000 barrels a day to make Ghana the third highest oil producer in Africa through more investments in the upstream sector.
He said the government’s local content programme had transformed the oil industry significantly.
He said under the NPP, price of gas had been reduced and gas production had also been boosted.
The former Minister of Petroleum, Emmanuel Kofi Buah-Armah, said the news of oil discovery by a Ghanaian company was good news.
He stated that the NPP government must not take the whole credit because it was the previous National Democratic Congress (NDC) which gave Springfield the initial contract for the NPP to extend the contract.
He said the production of oil should not be politicized at all because if Ghanaians were encouraged to invest in the oil sector, it would help boost the economy and provide employment to indigenous Ghanaians.
By Thomas Fosu Jnr