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Ghana’s oil find is already a curse - ACEP

Dr. Amin was speaking at a two day Africa Oil Governance Summit in Accra where local and other oil producing African country’s representatives discussed how to avoid governance lapses in natural resource governance to avoid oil curse.

 

The African Center for Energy Policy ACEP has said that the drop in oil prices has already made Ghana’s oil find a curse rather than a blessing.

According to the executive director of ACEP Dr. Mahammed Amin Adam, “oil curse manifest in many ways and one of them is where all of a sudden there is a fall in oil price”.

He said “our budget was dependent on oil revenues and so it begun to suffer in 2014 and it has suffered in 2015 as a result of oil price slush relative to what we anticipated”.

“Because what we anticipated couldn’t be achieved, government has had to postpone some of its programmes last year and this year. In that context the oil has been a curse to Ghana”. Dr. Amin explained

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On corruption, Dr. Amin bemoaned that “there have been several reports in the media and from ACEP’s investigations that the way Ghana gives out its oil contract through the administrative procedure as against open and competitive bidding processes can create room for people to corrupt the process. That is why we have been asking the government to include anti-corruption clauses in the Exploration and Production Bill”.

This according to the oil and gas policy analyst “will ensure that public officials and oil companies who are found to have involved in bribery and corruption will be prosecuted”.

Present at the summit was the Omanhene of the Essikadu Traditional Council Nana Kobina Nketsia V, Mrs. Joyce Rosalind Aryee, Hon. Albert Kan Dapaah, Mr. Kwame Jantuah of PIAC, Adelaide Addo-Fening team leader for the Ghana Oil and Gas for Inclusive Governance GOGIG and Solomon Kusi Ampofo from Friends of the Nation.

Other African representatives present were the coordinator of the Kenyan Civil Society Platform on Oil and Gas Charles Wanguhu from Kenya and environmentalist Nimpamya Enoch Biine Kaa from Uganda.  Others were from Nigeria and Zambia among others.

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