Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana
Chamber of Bulk Oil Distributors, Senyo Hosi, has stated that the country faces
an imminent fuel shortage if measures are not put in place to raise dollars for
the purchase of the product on the international market.
His comment comes on the back of a Bloomberg’s report that fuel shortage could
hit the country as the Bank of Ghana rations dollars after oil prices
surged following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In an interview on Joy FM, Mr. Hosi
indicated that the current fuel stock in the country could last for a month
with some more expected to come.
He added that the prevailing situation should not be a cause for alarm and
panic buying of fuel as the Bulk Oil Distributors together with other
stakeholders were working assiduously to find solutions to the looming crisis.
“Just to make everybody comfortable, in the country today, we have adequate
stocks to cover us about a month…The are no issues with that. So there is no
need for panic buying. As BDCs and oil marketing companies, we are all working
to make sure we keep the situation stable and that’s our mandate to this
country.
“But we are having challenges which is a fact…the foreign currency situation
and the truth is, if that continues, we are going to have challenges with
suppliers making products available to Ghana just as simple as that because
nobody pays Cedis for oil internationally, you need to have US Dollars,” he
emphasized.
Mr. Senyo Hosi added that the situation has become dire to the extent that the
Bulk Oil Distributors have had to sometimes fall on the black market for
dollars.
Even though it receives support from the Bank of Ghana, the CEO of the
group indicated that it was limited.
“…we have got the Bank of Ghana to actually commit a special auction
for BBCs which was not the case. So the Central Bank has since March being
taking a very proactive intervention for our market but that also is limited.
“We started with about 250 million…we are doing about 50% of our requirement
and now I think they have scaled down to 20-25% of our requirement which would
imply BDC’s would have to fall on the open market to meet the rest of the
requirement.
“That has gotten a bit tricky in recent times because we have had challenges
with predictability and certainty. We have to sometimes work with the open
market and unfortunately in some cases practically fall on the black market and
that is a situational truth which is not ideal,” he lamented.
Meanwhile, Mr. Senyo Hosi says “we are working together with the Central Bank
to come up with what we call the Oil FX market so that we can create a lot more
predictability and certainty for the international suppliers.”
Source:
ghanaweb.com