By on June 27, 2015
The Public Interest and Accountability Committee is a statutory committee established under Section 51 of the Petroleum Revenue Management Act 2011 (Act 815). As part of its responsibilities, the committee periodically releases reports that provide an independent assessment of the management of Petroleum Funds.
The committee admits to having challenges with sticking to deadlines for the release of the reports because of some resource constraints. Nevertheless, it is poised to present comprehensible reports on the management of Petroleum Revenue as and when they are ready.
Above is an infographic representing the distribution and management of Petroleum Revenues in 2013. Tracing from the Total Petroleum Revenue, we can see that the Government of Ghana (GoG) had 73.77% of the total amount and Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) had 26.23%. The government distributed the Petroleum Revenue it received into various funds. One of which is the Annual Budget Fund Amount (ABFA). The ABFA was supposed to be spent on four priority areas. These areas are:
- Roads and other infrastructure;
- Amortization of loans for the energy sector;
- Agricultural modernization;
- Capacity building.
According to the PIAC’s 2013 report, the Capacity Building priority area was neglected totally in 2013 by the government as funds were diverted into other areas like the Venture Capital Fund, Exim Guarantee Fund and Petroleum Commission.
That leaves no amount available for the money’s intended purpose: Capacity Building in the Oil and Gas sector of the Ghanaian economy. The Capacity Building priority area must receive its share of the ABFA in subsequent years. Capacity building of local talents in oil and gas industry is very important to enable citizens to have the skills to work, and understand issues relating to the industry. If there is no investment to develop local talents. We will not be able to control key aspects of the oil and gas industry as citizens. In the long term, we will still remain poor and under developed.