A member of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) Communications Team, Godwin Edudzi Tameklo has described Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia as someone who enjoys engaging in “rush–talk.”
He said this attribute of the Vice President has exposed his lack of understanding as regards how public policies work.
In his words, “You know, our Vice President has this penchant for engaging in rush-talk. This rush-talk, with the benefit of time, has rather exposed the fact that our Vice President is really not thorough when it comes to policy issues.”
Explaining his assertion, Mr Tameklo said that Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia led the government in striking a $2 billion deal titled Master Project Support Agreement (MPSA) with a hydropower engineering and construction firm, a Chinese state–run firm, Sinohydro Corporation Limited in September 2018.
The firm is enjoined by the deal to finance and execute the construction of infrastructural projects across the length and breadth of Ghana in exchange to having access to sites to mine bauxite in the country.
Mr Tameklo said although the Minority warned Dr Bawumia that the deal was going to incur debts, he indicated that members of the opposition party do not read.
Mr Tameklo said on JoyNews’ Newsfile on Saturday that, true to their suspicion, the deal has added to the country’s debt.
Touching on government’s Gold for Oil policy, Mr Tameklo said Dr Bauwmia who is credited with the initiative has failed to provide critical details of the programme to make for proper assessment.
According to him, Dr Bamumia should be able to make known to the public, the quantum of gold the government gets from small-scale miners and other mining companies and also indicate how much this gold are worth in order to purchase specified metric tonnes of oil the country seeks to buy.
Mr Tameklo’s comments come on the back of an assertion by Dr Bawumia that the current reduction in fuel prices at the pumps is due to the Gold for Oil deal.
According to the Vice President, the ‘Gold for Oil’ policy which is now in its third month is already yielding a positive impact and is expected to cause a reduction in prices of petroleum products at the pumps from March 16, 2023.
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Dr. Bawumia who was speaking at the commissioning of a new head office for the Bulk Oil Storage and Transportation Company in Accra said the country will make an annual savings of $4.8 billion to accelerate economic development.
“The savings in foreign exchange when we do, this will be an annual savings of $4.8 billion every year and that means the oil importing companies will not be going to the Bank of Ghana looking for $4.8 billion to buy oil”, he said.
However, some experts have expressed contrary views. They posited that the current reduction in petroleum prices is not necessarily attributable to the Gold for Oil policy.
A Political Risk Analyst, Dr. Theo Acheampong, also speaking on Newsfile, disagreed with government’s claim that the recent drop in fuel prices is a result of the Gold-for-Oil policy.
According to him, the price for gold-for-oil products are higher compared to existing products on the market.
He said the Bulk Oil Distributing Companies (BDCs) who did not participate in the policy are rather selling at lower prices.