Deputy Minister of Energy, Andrew Egyapa Mercer has vehemently rejected some reports in the media claiming he had said that the first consignment of the new Oil-For-Gold policy was paid for with cash.

Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia announced the barter policy last year, which sees Ghana pay for imported oil products with gold instead of relying on the country’s US Dollar reserves – a move experts say will help the country in many ways.

The first consignment under the policy was delivered in January.

However, reports by some media houses on Tuesday, made emphatic attributions to the Deputy Minister, under the headline “Ghana paid for 40,000 tons of oil instead of gold – Egyapa Mercer.”

The Deputy Energy Minister has however strongly rejected the claim attributed to him, describing the headline on his Facebook page as “pure mischief.”

Egyapa Mercer insisted the headlines being spread around do not even match the body of the story and the quotes used in the story.

To buttress his point, he posted a screenshot of one of the headlines alongside the two quotes from him used in the story, to prove he did not say what is contained in the headline attributed to him.

“When the story does NOT support the headline, one wonders whether it’s pure mischief or something else,” the Deputy Minister posted on his Facebook Page.

Egyaoa Mercer signed off his Facebook post with the hashtags #DMBIsFlawless, in an emphatic support to Dr. Bawumia for his role in pushing the policy.

Below are the quotes attributed to the Deputy Minister in the said story, which he shared on his Facebook page to buttress his point of suspected mischief against him, and perhaps the Vice President.

“The policy actually started with an intent to do strict barter for gold and petroleum products, but it became apparent that any of the international oil trading companies that do not have a commodity wing to deal with gold on their behalf will be excluded from the policy.

“We developed the policy such that we were operating two streams, one was direct barter and the second was monetising the gold, so we can pay for IOTs that were not other commodity focused but solely petroleum products…so the test run that we did was actually paid through the second route.”