Petrol should be selling at GH¢ 9 - NPP

The New Patriotic Party (NPP) has urged government to reverse the imposition of a 27% hike on petroleum products which has seen the price of petrol “increase from GHC 12 to over ghc15 a gallon.”

In a press statement signed by the party’s communications director Nana Akomea today said “By operation of the automatic petrol price adjustment formula, petrol should be selling at about ghc9 a gallon.”

The statement also said the two main determinants of the petrol prices -- the cedi exchange rate and the price of crude oil—have seen relative stability, with crude prices sliding from $110 in mid-2014 to $37 today.

“It is therefore totally baffling”, the statement said, “that in Ghana, the NDC government has not seen it fit to reduce the price of petroleum products to bring much needed relief to the Ghanaian consumer, but has actually increased the price of petrol by a whopping 27%, from Ghc 12 a gallon to nearly ghc16 a gallon.”

The party also cataloged series of taxes imposed by the ruling National Democratic Congress, describing “it as callous, wicked, insensitive and lazy government which quickly, time and again, resorts to using state power to financially squeeze the poor Ghanaian consumer.”

“Furthermore, over the last month or so, the NDC government has imposed at once, a 60% increase in tariffs for electricity, a 67% rise in water tariffs and a 27% rise in petrol price, on the long suffering Ghanaian.

All these unbearable increases have come on the back of only a 10% provision for increment in workers' wages and salaries,” according to the statement.

The party also accused government of passing on the cost of petrol to consumers without cushion by removing all subsidies.

“It must be noted that the ndc government has removed all subsidies on petrol prices by its operation of the automatic petrol pricing formula. So when the prices of oil or the dollar increase, the effect of petrol price increase has been passed on without any cushion to the Ghanaian consumer. But when the price of oil has fallen to its lowest level in 7 years, the NDC govt has not allowed the automatic reduction in petrol price, as per the formula, but has rather imposed new and increased taxes to rather raise the price of petrol by this whooping 27%,” the statement said.