The Managing Director and Group Chief Executive Officer of GOIL Company Limited (GOIL), Kwame Osei Prempeh has insisted that government did not direct them to reduce fuel prices.
But he disclosed on Joy FM's Newsfile that the Chief of Staff, Akosua Frema Osei-Opare called him to know how they can help during the nationwide strike by the commercial drivers protesting the hike in fuel prices.
He explained that the conversation was focused on steps GOIL could take to mitigate the effect of the surge in fuel prices especially on the operations of commercial drivers.
According to him, the conversation occurred amidst the indefinite strike action by Coalition of Commercial Transport Owners on Monday.
“I will be lying to say nobody spoke to me. Every responsible government in such a situation will speak to important stakeholders. The Chief of Staff called me that the drivers were on strike and what can GOIL do to help.
“I told her that in the previous window, we went down about 14 pesewas. This one we haven’t decided yet. So we were going to meet on Tuesday to look at our pricing,” he said on Saturday.
According to him, after the deliberations, GOIL decided to reduce its prices.
“So we met at our BDC level and after everything, we decided that if we come down to 6.70, GOIL will still make its margin. It would come down but not be bad for us.”
Mr. Prempeh noted that this is not the first time GOIL has reduced its prices. He stated that when a similar decision was taken in the past, the company was able to generate enough profit, despite the reduction.
“In the previous pricing window, GOIL went to ¢6.99, we decided to reduce it by ¢0.14. At the close of the window, we found that we had benefited a lot. When we came to ¢6.85, our volumes went up in a very unprecedented manner.
We believe that it was good for us to look at the price so in this window, we decided to look at our prices. Of course, it coincided with the drivers strike and other things but we assessed everything, we have our BDC, we sat down and said if you go this way, you can make profit,” he recounted.
He emphasised that GOIL has always fixed its prices independently, hence government could not have issued such a directive.
“We have said several times government never forced our hands to reduce our prices. We are in a deregulated environment and GOIL has always fixed its prices independently.
Almost all OMCs look at GOIL when we fix our prices, most of them undercut us, so they always use GOIL as a yard stick, but we also do a lot. GOIL had never priced according to the market forces. If it had been so, the fuel at the pump now would be more than ¢7.00.