About 50% of recommendations by the Public Interest and Accountability (PIAC) to remedy the findings in its Annual and Semi-Annual reports of management and utilisation of petroleum funds have not been acted upon by the relevant stakeholders. 

PIAC therefore want Parliament to take action on the recommendations that are outstanding.

Most of the reports indict the Ministry of Finance for misapplying petroleum funds.

For instance in the 2021 Annual Report, it requested in its recommendations that the Ministry of Finance should provide a breakdown of the disbursements to the District Assembly Common Fund and report same to PIAC.

Again, the report recommended that the Ministry of Finance in collaboration with relevant institutions should develop appropriate guidelines on the utilisation and reporting of ABFA disbursed to the DACF.

Chairman of the Public Affairs and Communications Sub-Committee, Eric Defor said it is worrying that about of the recommendations since the launch of the report have been recurring.

“Some of them keep recurring. So we will hope that the media will help us in our advocacy to get parliament who is empowered to take actions on the recommendation we made to be up and doing to ensure that we can cure some of these infractions in the utilization and management of the resources.

“I will say that we expect them [Parliament] to do better. If at this time, we are only 50% down the line in implementation of recommendations, we will be happier if they do 80% .So it means there is still a lot work to be done by parliament”, Mr. Defor stressed.

With regard to the key findings/observations in the 2021 Annual Report, PIAC said four of the 18 subsisting Petroleum Agreements have been terminated by the Petroleum Commission in 2021 for non-performance in their minimum work obligation.