Invest oil revenue in infrastructural projects -ACEP 

The African Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP), has urged government to use revenue from the country’s oil production to fund significant projects that will benefit Ghanaians.

The Executive Director of ACEP, Mohammed Amin Adam, who made the suggestion, also called on government to design a national infrastructure plan that will ensure that oil revenues are invested in projects.

“Unfortunately, with the way we are distributing our oil revenue, we have not provided the platform to showcase what oil revenue has delivered to us as a country. I am encouraging government to quickly come up with a National Infrastructure Plan which should be the basis for determining which projects we fund with our oil money.

“It should be projects that we can fund without any delays in completing those projects so that we don't suffer overall. This is the only way we can have value for money in the use of our oil money,” he said.

Oil prices to rise
Mr. Adam also commented on the plunge in global oil prices, saying prices will go up very soon.

Finance Minister, Seth Terkper, during his mid-year budget review presentation, announced a revision in projected price of a barrel of oil from 53.05 dollars, at the beginning of the year, to 45.35 dollars for the rest of 2016.

In addition, Mr. Terkper indicated that, government has revised projected oil revenue from 2 billion cedis to 1.4 billion cedis.

But Mr.Adam said oil prices will soon increase.This he said will improve the effectiveness of the TEN fields.

“Yesterday [Thursday], Brent crude had traded for 50 dollars per barrel, and this was attributed to a decline in US inventory. To the extent that OPEC is also planning to cap production and prices, could further recover and will mean that the revenue impact from TEN will improve,”he said.

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By:Kwabena Agyare/citifmonline.com/Ghana