[ 2015-03-27 ]

Minority Mad At $20m Loan For Capacity Building
The majority National Democratic Congress (NDC)
Members of Parliament (MPs) on Wednesday approved
another loan of $19.8 million for capacity
building in the oil and gas industry to the
chagrin of the minority members, particularly the
ranking member on Mines and Energy, K.T. Hammond.

He said the loan was completely needless and would
only add to the country’s mounting debt stock.

K.T. Hammond, who is the New Patriotic Party (NPP)
Member of Parliament for Adansi/Asokwa, said funds
for capacity building in the oil and gas industry
had already been catered for under the Petroleum
Revenue Management Act as a major component of the
distribution of the country’s oil revenue.

“In 2012, the Public Interest Accountability
Committee (PIAC) came out to say that an amount of
GH¢112 million of Ghana’s oil revenue had been
used on capacity building, yet the government has
not come out to tell the whole nation what kind of
capacity building was that huge amount of money
devoted for,” he said, stressing that it was
important for the government to account properly
for the amount assigned for capacity building from
the oil revenue before a further loan could even
be secured for the same purpose.

Mr K.T. Hammond told Parliament that going for the
$19.8 million loan did not make commercial sense
at all since money had already been allocated for
capacity building under the Petroleum Revenue
Management Act.

“Mr Speaker, this loan should be rejected by
this House because we are already saddled with
payment of huge interest on our monstrous debt
stock and therefore going for additional loan just
to build capacity in the oil and gas industry will
be insensitive to the nation’s fiscal
problems,” he charged.

According to the ranking member on mines and
energy, what even annoyed him most was the fact
that $7 million of the loan would be given to the
Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) which
is so much resourced that it could afford to
distribute monies to corporate bodies as
freebies.

“I for one and we in the Minority, will never
support this loan because Ghana is bleeding from
excessive borrowing by this government and that
this loan in particular is not necessary at all,
looking at our present circumstances,” he
underscored.

The Minister of Petroleum, Emmanuel Armah Kofi
Buah, stoutly defended the $19.8 million, saying
that the country needed to help build capacity of
staff of the ministry, the Petroleum Commission,
the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the
Internal Revenue Service, the Attorney-General’s
Office, as well as the Economic and Organised
Crime Office (EOCO) to help in effective
mobilisation of revenue in the oil sector.

He explained that the capacity of staff of these
institutions was very crucial in respect of the
rapid growth of the gas and oil industry.

The minister said since oil and gas were
discovered by the country, fast-track reforms had
taken place and that there was the need for
institutions which would help sustain the reforms
to be given effective capacity building.

He said for instance that $7.8 million of the loan
would be given to the Kwame Nkrumah University of
Science and Technology (KNUST) to train petroleum
engineers.

He said the cost of training technical people as
well as petroleum engineers abroad is very
expensive – $25,000 per technical training and
$100,000 per petroleum engineering training –
and therefore adequately resourcing domestic
institutions with the capacity to train local
experts would greatly help minimise the cost borne
by the Ministry of Petroleum to train technical
people overseas.

Meanwhile, members retired to the Committee of the
Whole to consider this year’s formulae for the
Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund), the National
Health Insurance Levy and the District Assembly
Common Fund amid heated debate.

Source - Daily Guide

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