The Chamber of Petroleum Consumers (COPEC) has named PUMA as the best price energy company in Ghana for the year 2017.
The prize followed a decision made by COPEC’s 2017 award committee on the basis that out of nearly twenty Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs) nominated for the award, PUMA had from its record over time displayed consistency in maintaining a comparatively low pump price for petroleum products, across its various outlets in the country.
Responding to questions from some members of the media after the event on what he thought about the award, Managing Director of PUMA Energy – Myles Bouvier-Baird, said: “Competition is healthy; competition creates efficiency, better standards and quality and that leads to consolidation, which in turn – results in better outcome for the consumersâ€.
He expressed the view that full deregulation of the country’s down stream sector of the Petroleum industry would open up the market for greater participation, competition and as a consequence: bring down the prices and promote greater level of efficiency.
Reacting to the assertion made by PUMA’s boss, some market analyst (on the contrary) argued that deregulation would rather give the OMCs an even greater leverage to raise pump prices at will and make the petroleum products even much more inaccessible to the Ghanaian consumers.
PUMA’s emergence as winner of the award comes as quite a surprise to the nation’s business community considering the relatively short time it has been operating on the Ghanaian market.With a current market share of about 4.6%, PUMA won the prize by beating bigger competitors who rather have the operating capacity to maintain best prices for petroleum products in the country.
Paramount among these was, GOil,  Ghana’s largest oil marketing and distribution company (the nation’s No. 1 OMC).