Vice President of the LPG Marketers Association of Ghana, Gabriel Kumi, has expressed his reservation about plans by the National Petroleum Authority (NPA) to implement the cylinder recirculation model from September this year.

According to him, about a month ago, the association received a letter from the NPA stating that in September, it would start the full implementation of the cylinder recirculation model. With this, Mr Kumi revealed that the association has been very cooperative with the NPA over the years to try and see how best both parties can implement the policy in the country.

“When we received the letter from NPA, we also responded. In fact, we gave NPA a response to the letter of implementing the CRM in September last week. That letter raises our concerns and our position on the way forward and we gave a timeline of about two weeks to be able to hear from NPA on our position and concerns.
“I would want us to give respect to NPA because we have given them a letter, they haven’t come back to us with a response yet. We are hearing that possibly, this week, we are likely to meet NPA on the letter we sent them. So, I wouldn’t want us to discuss the content of our letter until we have met NPA or until NPA has responded the letter… But obviously, we do have some serious concerns and we have made our position very clear and it’s a position we hold very dearly that we are not going to compromise on those issues.”
Gabriel Kumi

Mr Kumi emphasized that the association does not have anything against the policy, as he believes that government can only govern through the implementation of policies and programs. Nonetheless, he explained that there is the need for the association to express its grievances on some aspect of the model.

“So, we have no problem if government wants to introduce a policy in our sector. But then, we should be able to speak up if the policy is being implemented in a way that will be detrimental to the survival and existence of the industry players who have built the industry over the years.”
Gabriel Kumi

Stakeholders demand compensation from government

Furthermore, Mr Kumi highlighted that the LPG industry is one that is so entrenched in the country. Owing to this, he highlighted that there is the need for the NPA to be very careful in the way it is going about the implementation of the CRM.

“One thing I can say is that this is not a green field. This is an industry that has been in existence for the past thirty years. Per the implementation of Cylinder recirculation model, you are not introducing a new model, you are only trying to apply a new strategy to an existing industry…You don’t go about it as if we haven’t sold LPG in Ghana before, and this is the first time we are going to start selling LPG…:
Gabriel Kumi

Meanwhile, some key stakeholders in the Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) value chain have called on the government to compensate them by valuing their existing plants including every piece of equipment, vessels and the over 600 trucks currently involved in transporting LPG across the country and pay the relevant compensation to their owners.

This followed the National Petroleum Authority (NPA)’s plan to commence the Cylinder Recirculation Model (CRM) implementation with the full value chain of the model which would involve the filling of domestic cylinders with LPG at the Bottling Plants and the distribution of the same to LPG consumers at Cylinder Exchange Points (CEPs).

The Authority plans to begin the main CRM implementation in Accra and the Ashanti region as phase 1 in September 2022 and then extend the implementation to the other regions across the country in phases.

In the event that the compensation option could not be fulfilled, the stakeholders have demanded a transition period of not less than 10 years during which the Cylinder Recirculation Model (CRM) and their existing refilling plants would operate concurrently.