Ministry confirms figures on petroleum revenues

Accra, April 11, GNA - The Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning on Monday said it spent a total of 1,772.3 billion cedis in subsidy when the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) was under-recovering cost of operations.

A statement issued in Accra to confirm the figure and others related to petroleum revenues and expenditures said the figures put together indicated that expenditure on the product and its related activities exceeded revenues by 108.9 billion cedis in 2004.

The statement signed by Dr Anthony Akoto Osei, Deputy Minister of the Ministry, said as published in the Budget statement to Parliament in February, petroleum revenue amounted to 3,119.4 billion cedis; Road Fund was 639.5 billion cedis and TOR debt service, 749 billion cedis. The statement said the Government had assumed about 3.2 trillion cedis of TOR debt since 2002 and the debt service on this amounted to 714 billion cedis in 2003.

Other expenditures including those on the Bulk Oil Storage Transport Company and the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation amounted to 67.5 billion cedis.

Total petroleum related expenditures were 3,228.3 billion cedis. The statement said it had become necessary to confirm the figures that were contained in the 2005 Budget Statement, because it had come to the notice of the Ministry that certain people had put some figures on petroleum revenues and expenditures in the public domain, which did not reflect the facts.