The Chamber of Petroleum Consumers (COPEC) has called on the government to urgently focus efforts on strengthening the Cedi as a key strategy to rein in the soaring prices of petroleum products.
In recent weeks, fuel prices in the country have been on an upward spiral, a situation further exacerbated by the reinstatement of the Price Stabilization and Recovery Levy after a temporary suspension.
According to Duncan Amoah, Executive Secretary of COPEC, the root cause of the escalating fuel prices can be attributed to the depreciating value of the local currency against major trading currencies like the U.S. dollar.
“What we can do as a country at this point is really to strategize on your currency and do whatever magic that had been done because before August 2022, prices of petroleum products did hike and at a point, diesel and petrol were crossing GH¢21 and for some reasons, we were able to cool those two off,” Amoah stated.
He recalled how in August last year, the Cedi had plummeted to nearly GH¢17 to the dollar before the Bank of Ghana intervened, stabilizing the exchange rate at around GH¢12 to the dollar through undisclosed measures.
With global factors like the Russia-Ukraine conflict and tensions between Iran and Israel impacting international oil prices, Amoah believes Ghana has little control over those external forces.
However, he insists that strengthening the Cedi is a viable strategy the government can deploy to cushion the impact on local fuel prices.
“At this point, taxes cannot be taken, give or take, we cannot influence Israel on Iran, we cannot influence Ukraine from bombing Russian refineries. What we can do at this point is to ensure that your Cedi is not doing too badly as we have seen in the past few weeks,” he urged.
The COPEC Secretary warned that failure to arrest the Cedi’s freefall would render the country helpless in the face of soaring global fuel prices.