According to George Mireku Duker, the deputy minister of lands and natural resources, the first shipment of cheap petroleum will reach Ghana the following week.
“We are thinking of next week, assuming I’m not exaggerating,” the minister told reporters, expressing optimism.
The cheaper fuel will most likely arrive “on the 10th, 11th, and 12th of January,” according to sources from myjoyonline.com citing Energy Minister Andrew Egyapa Mercer.
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo declared in October 2022 that the government was attempting to obtain dependable and consistent sources of affordable petroleum products for the Ghanaian market in an effort to stabilize fuel costs.
He said this will “halt the escalation of fuel prices and bring relief to us all.”
After the announcement of the fuel deal with Abu Dhabi, several analysts cast doubt over its success.
Executive Director at the Institute of Energy Security (IES), Nana Amoasi VII, said “I don’t know who is advising the Energy Minister, because the venture they are undertaking is far from possibility. This is not how the energy sector works, so they should be careful.”
He was also concerned that government’s decision to secure a deal for cheaper petroleum products was not an attempt to “waste the country’s meagre resources or an attempt to enrich a few people to the detriment of over 30 million Ghanaians or a deliberate attempt to grow the energy sector debt.”
But the IES boss indicated that should the negotiations go according to plan, government must declare the full discount value which was agreed upon.
“They must tell Ghanaians what they also gave in return for that favour. And also, we must be very careful, our fear as IES is that they could be giving out something for free in order to get that discount,” he stressed.
“If there is a market that can give you a cheap discount to beat all the markets all over the world, I am sure the BDCs would have gone for it. So let us be careful of the venture that we are undertaking,” the IES executive director warned.