Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia said that the country’s currency rates going up and up, which has caused the prices of fuel products to go up, gave him sleepless nights.
The vice president claims that he was unable to sleep at night due to his concern with trying to come up with a solution to the crisis.
“One moment which gave me a lot of sleepless nights personally was when at one point, the forward exchange rate of GH¢19 to the dollar was used to price fuel at the pump, we were faced with how much higher it could go. We were faced with a very critical situation because we didn’t have enough foreign exchange reserves to meet this persistent demand.”
“Today, you are seeing that in Kenya, they are facing significant shortage of foreign exchange reserves resulting in petroleum queues. So, we had to think outside the box to prevent Ghana from going through that situation… and this is where the thinking for gold-for-oil came in,” he added.
Dr. Bawumia introduced a new gold-for-oil strategy for the government last year. According to official explanations, this approach would let the government to directly swap gold acquired by the Central Bank in exchange for imported oil products despite the expected result, the policy has been heavily criticised.
The vice president has been praising the programme, now in its third month of execution, saying that the country would continue to reap benefits from it and that it will eventually help stabilise the currency rate and fuel prices.
“We need to understand that the prices of fuel will go up and down. But what we expect to see under the Gold-For-Oil Policy is more stability in the pricing and also savings in foreign exchange. There is more to come, this is the third month of the operation of the policy.”
“Some people said it will not work; Ghana does not have enough gold. How can you say that? We’ve been mining this gold for 200 years; they keep taking it out and it cannot work for us? It doesn’t make sense. There are people who are very disappointed that it is working but bleeding is allowed. We have an impossibility mindset. They can keep to it, for us all things are possible by the grace of God.” he said.
The Vice President has said that if the policy is optimized to cover all of the country’s foreign imports by the end of the year as planned, the country will save about US$4.8 billion in foreign exchange each year.
“I’ve been told that next week we are likely to see a reduction in fuel prices and next week is actually not far. It is tomorrow. Tomorrow we will see the decline in prices that we expect. This is remarkable. Two and a half months ago you were at 23 cedis and today you are at 12 cedis per litre and falling. That is a good point.
” But let me note that the most important aspect of the Gold-for-oil policy is not just the reduction in fuel prices. That saving is huge, we are currently importing about 50 to 60 per cent of oil under this policy, the goal is to move to 100% and that will be done this year,” the vice president stated while commissioning a new head office for the state-owned Bulk Oil Storage and Transportation Company Limited (BOST). he added
Source – Tru News Report
