Fuel Shortage Looms - Bulk Oil Distributors Predict

Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Chamber of Bulk Oil Distributors, Senyo Hosi, has stated that the country faces an imminent fuel shortage if measures are not put in place to raise dollars for the purchase of the product on the international market.

His comment comes on the back of a Bloomberg’s report that fuel shortage could hit the country as the Bank of Ghana rations dollars after oil prices surged following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

In an interview on Joy FM, Mr. Hosi indicated that the current fuel stock in the country could last for a month with some more expected to come.

He added that the prevailing situation should not be a cause for alarm and panic buying of fuel as the Bulk Oil Distributors together with other stakeholders were working assiduously to find solutions to the looming crisis.

“Just to make everybody comfortable, in the country today, we have adequate stocks to cover us about a month…The are no issues with that. So there is no need for panic buying. As BDCs and oil marketing companies, we are all working to make sure we keep the situation stable and that’s our mandate to this country.

“But we are having challenges which is a fact…the foreign currency situation and the truth is, if that continues, we are going to have challenges with suppliers making products available to Ghana just as simple as that because nobody pays Cedis for oil internationally, you need to have US Dollars,” he emphasized.

Mr. Senyo Hosi added that the situation has become dire to the extent that the Bulk Oil Distributors have had to sometimes fall on the black market for dollars.

Even though it receives support from the Bank of Ghana, the CEO of the group indicated that it was limited.

“…we have got the Bank of Ghana to actually commit a special auction for BBCs which was not the case. So the Central Bank has since March being taking a very proactive intervention for our market but that also is limited.

“We started with about 250 million…we are doing about 50% of our requirement and now I think they have scaled down to 20-25% of our requirement which would imply BDC’s would have to fall on the open market to meet the rest of the requirement.

“That has gotten a bit tricky in recent times because we have had challenges with predictability and certainty. We have to sometimes work with the open market and unfortunately in some cases practically fall on the black market and that is a situational truth which is not ideal,” he lamented.

Meanwhile, Mr. Senyo Hosi says “we are working together with the Central Bank to come up with what we call the Oil FX market so that we can create a lot more predictability and certainty for the international suppliers.”