The Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP) is advocating the passage of the Petroleum Revenue Management Act (PRMA) as a way of checking the deliberate use of oil revenue for debt servicing at the expense of public investments.
The PRMA when passed should define rules for capping the Ghana Stabilization Fund (GSF), as this will bring clarity to the basis for capping and remove perceived discretionary powers of the Minister in the treatment of oil revenues and the GSF.
ACEP which made the recommendations in its analysis of the 2019 budget and government economic policy statement said ‘’to prevent encumbrances of unutilized ABFA, the Ministry of Finance must ensure that existing infrastructure projects yet to be completed are adequately funded by the ABFA. Fully utilizing ABFA will prevent time and cost overruns of existing uncompleted projects’’
The statement, dated 20th November 2018 and copied to BestNewsGH.com continued ‘’linked to the proposed solution to prevent encumbrances on the ABFA is the need for detailed annual expenditure planning with clear timelines for projects under the priority areas. This must be published together with the budget to enable CSOs to track ABFA investments’’
ACEP also proposed that the 2017 ABFA balance should be used to fund one major national project that all citizens can identify with.
Below is the full statement of the think-tank’s analysis of the 2019 budget and government economic policy statement.
ACEP’s Comments on 2019 budget
Source: BestNewsGH.com