Fuel shortage in Ghana: ‘We have one month stock of supply’ - Hosi

In an interview with Citi FM on Wednesday, June 22, Mr. Hosi said stakeholders, i.e the National Petroleum Authority (NPA), Energy Ministry, Bank of Ghana (BoG), and the BDCs are working to avert any fuel shortage in the country.

“We are collectively as an industry, Central Bank and the Energy Ministry and the National Petroleum Authority (NPA) working to address and mitigate that future risk.

“The Central Bank since March has been taking a very proactive intervention for our market but that also is limited. It started with about 50 percent of our requirement and now I think they have scaled down to about 20 and 25 percent of our requirement.

‘We are working together with the Central Bank to come up with what we call Oil FX Market, so we can actually create a lot more predictability and certainty for the international suppliers,” he explained.

“There is the risk of a crisis but we don’t have a crisis. That crisis will always exist provided these factors are examined.

“We have stocks to last you a month and a few more to come but that does not mean that there is enough comfort or certainty from the international market when they are seeing challenges with us making good our dollar payment,” Mr. Hosi added.

He was responding to a publication by Bloomberg suggesting that Ghana faces a looming fuel shortage because the BDCs may not be able to get enough dollars to purchase the product.

According to the Bloomberg report, Ghana faces a looming fuel shortage as the central bank rations dollars after oil prices surged following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The monthly fuel import bill for the West African nation jumped to $450 million in May, from $250 million in January.

But the BoG is said to be offering about $100 million a month at its foreign exchange auctions, and licensed bulk distributors can no longer plug the shortfall in the black market.