The chief executive officer of the Association of Oil Marketing Companies, has indicated that a significant number of OMCs are struggling to turn a profit as a result of the status of the economy.
“We had almost about 40% of them who were struggling such that month by month they were not making anything,” he said of the group at the beginning of the year.”
“They were only trying to survive to make sure that they just break even and others are even under the water now and they’re trying to struggle to come up,” he said this on JoyNews’ PM Express Business edition on July 14, 2023.
Agyemang Duah claimed that the country’s inflation and the depreciation of the cedi have had a severe impact on their pricing; but, due to the competitive nature of the oil market, OMCs are unable to increase or alter their margins as they see fit.
He claimed that this is just another element that impacts their profit margins.
“And you know in Ghana prices of goods and services are just rising just like that. And obviously for you to compete or be able to survive you need to up your scale in terms of the margin that you’d have to put on, but we’re not able to do that because it’s the market.
Duah continued, “The market is so competitive that if you decide to increase your margin, obviously it will affect your price, when you increase your price you’re out of the game. So, it’s really a tough hurdle that we have now,” he said.