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China-Africa Trade Information Service
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The Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) is aiming to holistically tackle Ghana'schronic reliance on imports for refined petroleum products.
With installed capacity of 45,000 barrels per stream day (bpsd), TOR says it will cost some US$500 million per annum for the refinery to be sustainable and refine enough products to meet annual demand, which currently costs the nation an average of US$1.2 billion to import on annual basis.
The Managing Director of TOR, Mr Isaac Osei, explained last Wednesday that the loss of foreign exchange (FX) was needless, especially given the impact on the cedi’s strength.
As a result, he said there was a business case for the country and the government, in particular, to support the refinery’s ongoing revival process to help avoid the FX drain on the economy.“When TOR is operating, in the whole year, we will probably spend about US$500 million.
But for the same products, industry will probably spend about US$1.2 billion and so it is important that TOR works,” Mr Osei told the Minister of Energy, Mr John Peter Amewu, when he and his entourage paid a familiarisation visit to TOR.“That kind of leakage from our own country in terms of FX clearly puts pressure on the cedi,” he said.
Last year, imports of refined petroleum products grew by 15.7 per cent to almost US$2 billion, although national consumption declined to 3.46 million tonnes.