The chairman of the Civil Society Platform on Oil and Gas, Dr. Steve Manteaw has chided the Ministry of Finance for meddling in a venture that is not within their remit.
He has therefore called for probe into the circumstances that led to an alleged diversion of $100 million of oil revenue that accrued to the State from petroleum lifting in the first quarter of 2022.
According to the civil society activist, the responsibility of granting loans to individuals and entities should not be the business of the finance ministry.
“The Ministry of Finance is not supposed to be in the business of granting loans, and it does not have authority over spending public resources, the entity that has authority to grant approval for the expenditure of public resources is Parliament.”he said.
The Minority in October 2022 filed a motion of vote of censure against Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, and in a seven-point allegation for grounds for his removal, alleged that the payment of $100 million of Ghana’s oil funds into an offshore company which wasn’t reported to Parliament in the official documentation.
Expressing his concerns about the proceedings so far, Dr. Steve Manteaw believes the committee should do more probing in the money that should accrue to the state.
He also alleged that interests accrued from Ghana’s 7 percent stake in the Jubilee and TEN oil fields which should have gone to GNPC are unaccounted for, and it is “not too clear because the Ministry of Finance came out to say the monies were paid to GNPC through a loan.”
“If that is the case, then one would want to see a loan agreement, but I doubt there is any such loan agreement, and so I would have expected that the Committee looking into the matter will look in that direction,” he stressed.
Adding that, “…..the Petroleum Holding Fund is the repository for all petroleum revenues derived from petroleum activities, and it was established purposely so as not to co-mingle petroleum revenues with the general pool of funds that accrue to the Government and to enable proper cracking and accounting for petroleum revenue in this country.”
The confirmation is in contravention of Section 15 of the Petroleum Revenue Management Act, 2011 (Act 815), as amended by Act 893 which instructs all revenues accruing to Ghana’s oil revenue to be deposited in the Petroleum Holding Fund (PHF).
Source: theGhanaianvoice.com