The Chamber of Petroleum Consumers Ghana (COPEC), has given government a seven-day ultimatum to withdraw the price stabilization and the recovery levy or face its wrath.
The Executive Secretary of the COPEC, Duncan Amoah, stated that now is not the time for the levy to be reintroduced and wants it removed by government.
“The Finance Ministry will have seven days to reconsider this or else we will match there immediately.”
Duncan Amoah
The COPEC Executive Secretary stated that government cannot continue to charge consumers for a stabilization and recovery levy when it has failed to stabilize fuel prices.
“Fuel prices are also very high and no penny is coming from official quarters to stabilize anything neither are we seeing any under recoveries. If you need money to subsidize premix, go back to Parliament and request for 3, 2, 4 pessewas but don’t keep on using that to continuously increase fuel prices.”
Duncan Amoah
According to Duncan Amoah, the stabilization and recovery levy has outlived its usefulness and must go just as some other practices have outlived their usefulness.
Fares to be increased
Also commenting on the development, Charles Addo, spokesperson of the Concerned Drivers Association, hinted on a possible fare increase by the driver unions across the nation.
Mr. Addo indicated that the transport operators have come to an agreement that tomorow, Wednesday, February 2, 2022 they will decide and come out with the percentage that they want to take from the masses.
“For the transport fares, come what may, we will increase it. That is what we talked about last Tuesday and this Wednesday, we will go and finalize it and announce to the public that this is the percentage that we are taking.”
Charles Addo
Charles Addo averred that government should not use the subsidization of the premix fuel for the fishermen as basis to reintroduce the levies to “extort money” from them.
“As Mr. Duncan said, the price and stabilization levy, we don’t see what it’s doing for us and they are charging us for it every now and then. We, the transport operators, met last Tuesday and we thought of increasing our fares because the commodities that we are using have all shot up by 75 percent.”
Charles Addo
Prices of goods and fuel are expected to go up because the levy which is a key component of the fuel price build up has been restored. The National Petroleum Authority (NPA) in a latest release has reintroduced the stabilization levy on petrol diesel and Liquified Petroleum Gas (LPG).
The levies were scrapped in October last year to mitigate the impact of rising prices of petroleum products on the world market on consumers.
A statement issued by the NPA stated that all Oil Marketing Companies (OMC’s) and Liquefied Petroleum Gas Companies (LPGMs) are to take note of the reintroduction and apply them in their PBU accordingly.
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