The Chairman of the Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC), Major Daniel Sowah Ablorh-Quarcoo (retd), has called on the government to develop a national policy to guide the spending of the country’s oil revenue to ensure development.
He said there was the need to spend oil revenue on particular projects that would have an impact on the lives of the citizenry to signal that the country was producing oil in commercial quantities.
Maj Ablorh-Quarcoo made the call at the fourth public meeting of the PIAC in Tamale to present the committee’s report on the management of the country’s petroleum revenue for January to June 2013.
According to the report, total petroleum produced within the period was 18,955,117 barrels, out of which the government, through the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC), lifted 3,982,956 barrels, representing 21.2 per cent.
He said the high expectation among the citizenry of the country’s oil industry must not be dashed.
“As of now, we cannot feel anything to show that oil is being produced in the country,” he said.
Maj Ablorh-Quarcoo said members of the public had been asking about the impact of the oil industry on their lives and noted that that must be a challenge to the government to work to reverse the trend.
He said spending the oil revenue without a comprehensive national policy could spell doom for the country, as the oil reserves would be depleted and there would be nothing in terms of concrete projects to show for it.
He urged the government to take PIAC’s recommendations seriously and implement them because they would help improve the management of the country’s oil revenue.
In a speech read on his behalf, Alhaji Limuna Mohammed Muniru, the Northern Regional Minister, entreated businesses in the region to acquaint themselves with the recently passed Local Content Legislative Instrument to expand their investments.
Some members of the public who attended the meeting urged the government to spend the oil revenue judiciously to benefit the entire citizenry.
— GNA