Mr. Tsatsu Tsikata, a former CEO of the Ghana National Petroleum Company (GNPC) has asked government to carefully monitor the publicly declared expenditure of the companies involved in oil exploration in the country.

He said the government should be interested in how the country is going to benefit from the expenditures that the oil companies would be making during exploration activities in the country.

He was speaking to Citi FM Thursday morning, February 28, 2008.

Mr. Tsikata said, for instance Tallow Company Ltd declared that they would be spending US$4 billion as capital for their activities. He asked, “what would that mean to Ghana?”

He said the government should monitor this expenditure and find out how much of this amount would be spent on Ghanaian goods and services.

He therefore called on government not to be interested only in the revenue that would be generated from the oil find but also in the expenditure. Mr. Tsikata called on government to set up a monitoring team with the capacity to carefully monitor the expenditure of the companies to ensure that Ghana is not cheated in the process.