Kennedy Agyapong slams gov’t over gold for oil programme

A member of the governing New Patriotic Party(NPP) and Member of Parliament for Assin Central, Kennedy Agyapong has slammed the government over its decision to trade country’s gold for crude oil.

The NPP Presidential hopeful said the decision does not make sense to him and question why government would not rather sell the gold for money and use some to buy the oil.

Mr Agyapong was speaking in an interview on Sompa TV sighted by GhanaPlus.com.

“Does it make sense to you that you said you have gold, you are going to use it to buy oil, Gold for oil. why don’t you sell your gold, make the money and go and by the oil and go through middleman,” he said.

“Me, I didn’t go to school but the economy is in my head, I did not go to school, simple things, simple things that we can do and am surprise, we said we have the men and we are hailing this, we are hailing gold for oil. Jesus Christ,” Mr Agyapong added.

Gold for oil

The Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia while speaking at the 2022 Association of Ghana Industries (AGI) Awards in Accra announced government decision to trade Ghana’s gold for crude oil in a barter trade arrangement.

The programme, he said was to save the country some $3billion spent on oil import and give it the space to accumulate more international reserves.

It was also to mitigate the impact of its dwindling forest reserves and brings some respite to the Ghana Cedi.

The policy, he said if implemented as planned for the first quarter of 2023, “will fundamentally change our balance of payments and significantly reduce the persistent depreciation of our currency”,

Dr Bawumia added “The barter of gold for oil represents a major structural change”

Some consignment under the programme has since arrived in Ghana.

Source: GhanaPlus.com