The Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP) has urged the government to initiate discussions on the Agyapa Royalties deal to prevent another rushed agreement.
Executive Director of ACEP, Ben Boakye has said the civil society community was still waiting for an open discussion on the deal to ensure that it better serves the public good.
“We are waiting to see how robust the next Agyapa will look like and how the valuation will account for the concerns we earlier raisedâ€, Mr Benjamin Boakye, Executive Director of ACEP told the media on Thursday, August 19, 2021, in Accra.
Mr Boakye was speaking to the media at the close of a two-day training for journalists.
The training was aimed at building their capacity to understand and use the Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC), the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), and the Annual Petroleum reports, to track, monitor and report on resource revenue expenditure in Ghana.
ACEP in collaboration with the Ford Foundation organised the training that intended to improve the capacity of the media to effectively inform citizens and demand government accountability on the management of extractive resources.
Mr Boakye explained that since the last time, in 2020 when President Akufo-Addo instructed that engagements should be done with all people who have had issues with the transactions of the deal, such an engagement had not happened yet.
“We only saw one forum in Legon with students who didn’t even ask any questions and that couldn’t have been the engagement.
“So, we are happy and ready to engage and share our thoughts with the government. If the principle is to really do something new, that will benefit Ghana, nobody should be afraid to engage and debate,†he said.
President Nana Akufo-Addo last year instructed the Finance Minister to return to Parliament to reconsider the arrangement in the transaction with the Agyapa Mineral Royalties Limited.
This was after the Office of the Special Prosecutor communicated findings of a corruption risk assessment conducted into the transaction.
Some of the areas prioritised for scrutiny by President Akufo-Addo during the deal’s directed return to Parliament includes allocations, relationship and investments involved.