Fuel Prices Should Have Gone Down COPEC

Prices for fuel should have decreased rather than increased because the price of crude oil on the world market has fallen significantly in recent time, according to the Chamber of Petroleum Consumers Ghana (COPEC).

The chamber said it was not happy with the National Petroleum Authority (NPA) for directing that GH₵0.05 should be added on every litre of fuel in the Price Build Up for petroleum products from June 1, 2024.

According to the chamber, the decision has led to a cascading effect on fuel prices at the pumps, burdening the public.

“Indeed, fuel prices should have declined in the last window and this window. The cedi’s performance has been largely blamed for the prices still being where they are and very high.

Unified Petroleum Price Fund (UPPF) used to be around 45 pesewas a litre, but unfortunately, we’ve had to increase it and increase it. Currently, we’ve also adjusted it to 90 pesewas a litre,” Duncan Amoah, Executive Secretary of COPEC explained.

According to him, consumers were already reeling under the pressure of high prices of petroleum products at the pumps as a result of the depreciation of the local currency.

“These things simply persist to add onto the pressure that fuel prices persist to face in the country. It is quite unfortunate that we persist to add on at a time that we should be thinking of reducing prices for our people.

“Prices simply will end up going up because we have done an increase in some of the margins just a few days ago, not good enough,” he said.

According to some oil marketing companies (OMCs), prices at the pumps would not have changed if the UPPF margin had not shot up.

While Shell is selling a litre of petrol and diesel at GH₵14.84, GOIL is selling a litre of petrol for GH₵14.60, from its previous price of GH₵14.55 as diesel sells for GH₵14.75, up from GH₵14.70 before.