Data from the Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC) shows that Ghana’s revenue from oil production saw an increase in its revenue, recording $783.33 million in the year ending 2021.
This represents a 17.5 percent increase in revenue from the $666.39 million recorded in 2020.
Chairman of PIAC, Prof Kwame Adom-Frimpong, while presenting the 2021 annual report on the management of Ghana’s petroleum revenue on Wednesday [April 13, 2022] noted that the increase in oil revenue is attributed to the high cost of crude oil prices on the global market.
He said although predictions were that revenues would be lower for 2021 compared to 2020 due to the reduced production volume, the hike in crude prices gave the country windfall revenues enough to compensate for the reduced production volume.
“The total revenue, increased by 17.5% from $666,390,751 in 2020 to $783,325,849.87 in 2020 due to higher crude oil prices. This is in spite of the decline in crude oil production in 2021. The volume decreased by 17.7%, so we were thinking that once the volume had decreased, it will go with the revenue decreasing, but it didn’t happen that way because the price increase was more than the volume decrease,” Prof. Adom-Frimpong.
Meanwhile, PIAC is calling on the Ghana National Petroleum Cooperation (GNPC) to double up efforts at recovering loans to government and its agencies to ensure that the Corporation’s work programme does not suffer from non-implementation.
It further urged it to discontinue granting loans and guarantees to government until significant recoveries are made with respect to outstanding loans and guarantees owed the cooperation.