The Progressive People’s Party (PPP) has described as “unacceptable, unjustifiable, insensitive and suffocating,” the current increase in petroleum prices by the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) government.
The government through the National Petroleum Authority (NPA) announced a nine per cent increment in petroleum prices over the weekend.
According to the NPA, the price increase has been necessitated by the rapid depreciation of the cedi.
The NPA noted that, “These increases as we see are full-time recovery because we do not want to incur any losses or any under-recoveries again…you also know that the cedi has seen some depreciation in the period under review. And these three factors all uniting, is what has caused the price to increase to 9 per cent.”
But, in a statement signed and issued by the National Secretary of the PPP, Mr. Kofi Asamoah-Siaw and copied to Today in Accra yesterday, the PPP pointed out that the government of Ghana refused to reduce fuel prices in equal measure when the world price of crude oil dropped in the last quarter of 2014 to about 50% from US$120.00 to less than US$50.00.
“When that happened the government of Ghana, per His Excellency, President Mahama, indicated that the windfall should be reserved or saved against future increases in the prices on the world market,” the PPP noted.
According to the PPP, the depreciation of the cedi and its foreign exchange losses experienced by the Bulk Oil Distribution Companies was a direct consequence of the mismanagement of the economy by the NDC government.
“It is therefore unthinkable for government to worsen our current situation by transferring the losses to Ghanaians. We can no longer pay for the inefficiencies and the incompetence of the government,” the statement stressed.
The statement indicated that, “it would be better for the president to resign than to continue to punish the very people who gave him the opportunity to govern.”
“We are now at the mercy of “dumsor’ which has caused considerable harm to businesses and individuals in terms of high cost of business, investment losses, collapse of industries and small businesses and loss of thousands of jobs.
This dumsor is also caused by the same government’s inability to produce enough energy to support the economy.
“…we currently purchase petroleum products to power our industries and our homes and the best the government can do is to slap us with an increase in fuel prices. What crime have we committed to deserve these high levels of economic mismanagement? …We call on government to reverse this current increase in petroleum prices until thedumsor is over and take steps to halt the free fall of our currency.”
Additionally, the PPP also called on the people of Ghana to vote out the NDC in 2016.
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