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GNPC, Petroleum Commission have no business in oil and gas capacity building -ACEP

According to ACEP, that will help the ministry to identify which capacities are already available and those required in order to fully take advantage of the provisions in the Local Content Policy.

 

The African Center for Energy Policy ACEP has asked the Petroleum Commission PC and the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation GNPC to leave capacity building in the oil and gas industry to the ministry of education.

According to ACEP, that will help the ministry to identify which capacities are already available and those required to fully take advantage of the provisions in the Local Content Policy. ACEP decried the current situation whereby the PC, Ministry of Petroleum and GNPC are all rolling out scholarships programmes for Ghanaians who are not able to compete in the oil and gas sector.The deputy executive director of ACEP Benjamin Boakye, speaking at a public forum in Takoradi on the Local Content and Local Participation noted that “at the moment, the petroleum Ministry is awarding scholarships, GNPC is also awarding scholarships, and Petroleum Commission is also awarding scholarship. In the end, we do not see which capacities they are all building.He said “the long term vision of a local content policy is to ensure reasonable competition between local companies and multinationals. You begin doing that as a country by allocating or protecting certain percentage of jobs or contracts for your local industries. But if the right capacities are not given over time, you end up being protectionist. You protect jobs which your locals cannot take up”.

According to ACEP, it is sad to see capacity building monies channeled to institutions like NADMO and MASLOC which do not produce any capacity the industry requires.  These are some of the reasons why ACEP is calling for "a comprehensive plan factored in the curricular of the Ministry of Education to identify which capacities Ghana has now and those that we do not have."

Mr. Boakye cautioned that, the absence of such comprehensive and long term plan  will have a retrogressive effect on the Ghanaian economy because no value will be added.

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