Felix Kwakye Ofosu, the Presidential Spokesperson and Minister of State in charge of Government Communications, has hailed the GH¢1 fuel levy’s role in addressing the nation’s energy sector’s indebtedness.
Ghana implemented a GH¢1.00 per litre fuel levy, known as the “D-Levy” or part of the Energy Sector Levies (Amendment) Act, 2025 (Act 1141), effective July 16, 2025, to generate revenue for the energy sector, especially to address outstanding debts and funding gaps.
Speaking at the 2026 maiden edition of the Government Accountability Series Press Conference at the Presidency in Accra, Mr Ofosu said the whole idea of the GH¢1.00 Fuel Levy was to ensure that expensive liquid fuels that were purchased for the purposes of firing thermal plants but was not factored into the tariff bill gap was addressed because it was a problem.
“The estimates show that on a yearly basis, about $1.2 billion or so is required for the purpose of importing liquid fuels to fire thermal plants.
“Now, if some effort is not made to bridge this gap, it will pose a challenge, though some efforts are being made to address the many problems that plague the sector which we inherited,” the Minister said.
He said the Finance Ministry would, in his annual reports to Parliament on petroleum receipts and the general accounting done for the budget for each year, shed light on how much had been collected from the GH¢1.00 Fuel Levy.
“But what is clear is that it has been put to good use and has contributed significantly to achieving stability in the power sector.
“When we took over power, there were challenges with electricity stability, and I think all of us can attest that the electricity supply has been stable for several months now. We’ve not experienced the outages that many have feared would be the case.”
He said that, regarding the clearance of energy-sector debt, the Finance Ministry issued a statement informing Ghanaians that up to about $1.4 billion of debt owed to the energy sector had been cleared.
He noted that he did not think the statement suggested by any stretch of the imagination that $1.4 billion was all the debt that had been cleared, adding that a significant chunk of the debt had been cleared within a matter of a year, and this had brought significant relief to the players in the sector.
“What had happened was that there was some lack of discipline in terms of adherence to the cash waterfall mechanism, which was designed to ensure that all players in the sector got some form of liquidity to finance their operations,” the Minister said.
“For a long time, there were some players in the sector, especially IPPs, who were not getting commensurate amounts. The Minister for Finance and the Minister for Energy have ensured that the arrangement is adhered to, and that is why money is trickling to all the players in the sector, and we are achieving the stability that we have achieved.”
He said the statement only emphasised government’s commitment to ensuring that we pay down the energy sector debts.
Mr Ofosu said that, having been able to pay this amount, it would be ensured that more would be paid to have the entire debt removed from the books, while efforts were made to open up finance in that sector.
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