Africa Center for Energy Policy gathers evidence on poorly executed oil-funded projects to demand legal action

ACEP has often expressed worry that Ghana may not have anything good to show for how the revenue from its petroleum sector is used.

The Executive Director of ACEP, Benjamin Boakye told Accra-based Citi FM that now is the right time to assess what the oil revenue has been used for or invested in.

“We are still building a lot of dossier with the projects that we are visiting around; and it strikes me that some of the projects like the dams were built and washed within 3 years. Meanwhile, three or two million cedis would have been paid to a contractor to deliver that project. We need to check who these contractors are,” he suggested.

He revealed that with every oil-funded project ACEP has visited so far there was no value for money. He described this trend as worrying.

“We cannot tell a success story with our oil as far as the expenditure of the revenue is concerned. It essentially replaced GoG budgetary funding for infrastructure. If you check the 2020 budget for example about 90 percent of government expenditure is coming from oil.”

He said that the government must re-evaluate all oil funding projects and culprits who have hindered work must be punished.

Ghana has been receiving revenue from the oil and gas industry since 2011. However, many Ghanaians especially people in the Western Region keep complaining that they are not benefitting from the Petroleum industry.

Mr Boakye explained that the people in the Western Region do not benefit from oil funds because of how the revenue is spread, as well as how projects are shoddily executed from the Annual Budget Funding Amount.