The youth wing of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) has debunked arguments about the Ghana Stabilisation Fund (GSF) and the Ghana Heritage Fund (GHF) being the brainchild of former President John Dramani Mahama.
In a presser aimed at setting the records straight about how the GHS and GHF came into being, the group opined that both initiatives are the “sole ingenuity of a group called Civil Society Platform on Oil and Gas.”
They said this civil society group is the one that got the GSF and GHF enshrined in the existing Petroleum Revenue Management Act (PRMA).
The group was responding to an assertion by a member of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Mr John Abdulai Jinapor, that Mr. Mahama must be equally commended for making monies available through the GSF for President Akufo-Addo to use to cushion Ghanaians against the concomitant economic challenges of the Coronavirus (COVID-19).
Mr Jinapor said it was through the ingenuity of Mr. Mahama and the NDC that both the Stabilisation and Heritage funds were created.
For the purposes of public education, the GSF and GHS are the vehicles through which excess petroleum revenues are deposited for savings and investments it stated.
While the GSF has been set up for the government to with draw funds from in times of shocks to the economy or unanticipated shortfalls in oil revenues, the GHS was set up to provide an inheritance to support development for unborn generations when Ghana’s petroleum reserves have been depleted.
It would be recalled that the President Akufo-Addo, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, implemented a number of programmes and initiatives, including withdrawals from the GSF, to cushion Ghanaian businesses and households affected by the economic impact of the pandemic.
The group said these measures put in place by the government have been greeted with loud cheers and commendations from Ghanaians, and the National Democratic Congress realising this high-performance rating to the government and its potential electoral benefits, has cunningly positioned itself to share the accruing credit.
Stating the facts about how the two funds came into being, the NPP youth wing said though they acknowledge the fact that the PRMA 2011, Act 893 was not enacted under the Mahama Administration (2012-2016).
However, the process of establishing an effective and relevant legislative and regulatory framework to manage the oil sector, including oil revenue, started in 2008 under former President Kufuor’s administration, they stated, adding that it was then President Kufuor who organized the first national conference on oil and gas management, and invited representatives from civil society and relevant stakeholders to assist in drafting a working Petroleum Revenue Management Policy (PRMP). This was to prevent Ghana from becoming a victim of the “resource/oil curse.”
The group also said that even before extending of invitations to civil society organisations to help draft the PRMP, the NPP government had commenced engagements with external experts and governments, ostensibly to design a robust PRMP, and it is evident in paragraph 170 of the 2008 Budget Statement.
The group stated emphatically that the NDC government was never interested in social accountability, and thus was lackadaisical in enacting the Petroleum Revenue Management Act, impliedly the Stabilisation Fund and Heritage Fund.
Stating their basis for these wild arguments, they observed that the NDC abandoned all the processes and initiatives set in motion by the Kufuor administration, including the construction of a gas plant, upon assumption of office in 2009.
“They were simply not interested in social accountability for the obvious reason of mismanaging, misappropriating and stealing the oil monies. This is evident in the fact that when oil production began in 2010, there was no revenue management law and no independent regulator for the oil and gas sector. The existing law then, passed in 1984, governing the upstream segment of the industry exploration, development, and production was a legislative holdover from the early years of the last military-backed regime.”
They it was several civil society groups, the vociferous Minority in Parliament at the time, and radio and television programmes across the country, which featured regular often impassioned, debates and commentary on the legislation, particularly the PRMA, that consequently forced the NDC administration to enact the laws.
They reiterated that it was not correct for the NDC to suggest that the establishment of the GSF and GHF was the brainchild of Mr. Mahama. “The fact that the bill was passed under an NDC regime doesn’t make Mahama the brain behind it.”
The post Stabilisation and Heritage funds are not brainchild of Mahama – NPP Youth appeared first on The Chronicle Online.
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