'Ensure Best Practices In Oil Revenue'

Best practices of international standards have been advocated for the management of the oil revenue to achieve the best out of the oil discovery for the country.

Dr. Joe Amoako-Tuffuor, a Policy Advisor at the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, said revenue benchmarking rule, sustainable incomes and transparency were key in the nation's quest to derive maximum benefits from the oil discovery.

He said, “Long-term planning, integration of oil revenue with budgetary systems, minimization of extra-budgetary spending and improvement in public spending efficiency are some of the best practices that must be adopted.

“Botswana and United Arab Emirates initiated a10-year development plan.”

Speaking on the topic, 'Ghana, Options for Oil Revenue Management, Dr. Joe Amoako-Tuffour, who is also a lecturer at the Saint Francis Xavier Canada, said vital framework of petroleum revenue management was necessary to avoid group capture and resource curse that were attributed to oil management on the African continent.

“The four challenges of petroleum revenue management are how much revenue to spend, on what to spend and how to decouple public spending from price volatility,” he noted.

On the use of resource funds, fiscal rules and legislation, he called for the insulation of fiscal policies from the negative consequences of revenue vulnerability by enhancing transparency in the management of revenue and fiscal policy.

The presentation outlined “big push” spending policy from 2011-2018 where there would be high spending and (2019-) where there would be low spending.

He therefore called for an accelerated investment in water and sanitation, education, health and infrastructure such as roads and railways.

On risks of the industry, he touched on unstable government spending, uncertainty in inflation dynamics and a worsening balance of trade regime.

Dr. Amoako-Tuffour opined that transforming oil revenues into developmental projects depends on the quality of spending, sustainability of fiscal policies across political regimes and identification of priorities for development.

Ghana discovered oil in 2007 and is expected to transform the country's growth rate or Gross Domestic Product (GDP)

By Charles Nixon Yeboah