Petroleum Regulatory Bodies Need More Funds

Professor Kwaku Appiah-Adu, Vice Dean at the Central University College, on Tuesday urged government to pump more funds into petroleum regulatory bodies for direct capital expenditure. He reiterated that seed money ought to be allocated to the newly-established Petroleum Commission (PC), to enhance capacity-building. Prof Appiah-Adu was speaking on the topic �Fiscal Regime in Oil and Gas development in Ghana, � at the on-going media training on oil and gas in Accra. The seven-day intensive training programme is being organized by Penplusbytes, an International ICT Journalism, with support from Star Ghana, a non-governmental organization and attended by 10 selected journalists. Prof Appiah-Adu,,a consultant in the oil and gas sector, emphasized that the PC ought to be supported in a transparent manner to build its capacity in the oil business, to enable it compete nationally and internationally. Similarly, the watchdog, Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC) should be funded to fulfill its monitoring and evaluation mandate effectively, he added. Prof Appiah-Adu observed that though Ghana had enacted a Petroleum Revenue Management Act (815), effective implementation of the provisions of the Act is critical, if the nation is to reap optimum benefits from it. The Petroleum Revenue Management Act (815), among others, regulates the collection, allocation and management by government of petroleum revenues derived from upstream petroleum activities. Prof Appiah-Adu expressed concerned about the absence of long-term development plan to guide the nation to best utilize its oil and gas resources, and emphasized the importance to estimate petroleum income taxes accurately . If petroleum income taxes and other components of the petroleum revenue are not estimated accurately, this could lead to a distortion in the determination of the benchmark revenue, and thus affect its distribution, he added.