Ghana To Lose $500m In Crude Oil Revenue

Addressing Ghanaians living in Germany at the Intercontinental hotel in Berlin last Tuesday to round off his state visit to that country, he said the unpredictability of the world economy and how it affected nations meant Ghana could not put much hope in crude oil for survival.

President Mahama said,“Currently the world economy is a very unpredictable place, Increasingly, oil and gas is playing a role in our revenue.”

“From 2011 when we started producing oil, it’s been a small part of our revenue, it’s been about 6 percent of our total revenue, but every year it has continued to grow and so this year we were expecting about $1.2 billion from oil revenues but look at what has happened, the price of crude oil has gone down and from the estimates that we have, we are going to lose about $500 million in oil revenues coming into the economy and so that’s the problem when your economy is based on primary commodity exports.”

“That’s why we need to add value to our economy by ensuring that we add value to some of the primary products that we export and so when it comes to the oil and gas sector, I have more faith in the gas than in the oil because with the gas we can build a downstream petrochemical industry and be able to multiply the effects it has on our economy” he added.