Fuel subsidy does not exist - Dr Charles Wereko Brobbey

According to him, Ghanaians had been deceived into believing that petroleum products were subsidised.

“In recent times, the discussions about petroleum pricing have been unfortunately underpinned by a lot of ignorance about the basic baseline fact and not understanding those facts has led to a lot of misconceptions about what is actually going on.”

He noted that a lot of the ignorance had been deliberately created by the political system “but it is time for us (Ghanaians) to return to sanity. I think that it is time for us to return to sanity. Government has not taken money from anywhere other than from within the petroleum basket to subsidise petroleum products prices.”

Dr Wereko Brobbey also called for a non-partisan approach to manage the inevitable rise in fuel prices in the country.

“We need to collectively put in place a systematic and transparent mechanism so that the automatic adjustment would take place, up and down without any governmental control I am hoping this can be done through a by partisan approach using the parliamentary committee on energy” he said.

He decried that there were no merits for government to indicate that resources for social amenities must be used to subsidise petroleum products.

“There are no merits in anyway whatsoever for anybody arguing that resources for school, hospitals and other social goods must be used to subsidise petroleum products” he lamented.

Meanwhile, a member of IMANI Ghana, Mr Kofi Bentil, had indicated that Dr Wereko Brobbey’s assertions were inaccurate.

According to him, the fundamental principal behind subsidy was when one paid less than the market price of a product with someone paying the difference.

“If we are buying the thing for $10 and we are letting people buy it for $8 somebody is making up the shortfall” he said.

He debunked the allegations that government did not pay subsidies.

According to him, “when the bills mount up and people threaten to cut the supplies, government finds money and pays”.

He emphasised that although they did not know how often that was the bottom line, the government spent money on fuel subsidy.

“Therefore the fact of the matter is that somebody is making up the shortfall for the differences between what consumers pay and what we buy it for and that person is government” he added. -