President John Evans Atta Mills has summoned a special cabinet meeting this week to find a lasting solution to the Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) challenge facing the country. The decision to meet came after a Special Team set up to investigate the challenge presented its final report to the President at the weekend. Preliminary investigations have revealed that the challenge resulted from a substantial increase in the usage of the commodity by commercial vehicles. Speaking to the Daily Graphic after touring some gas filling stations in Accra and Tema metropolises, a Deputy Information Minister, Mr Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, said a change from the use of petrol to gas by vehicles was 32 per cent annually. He said statistics from the Driver Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA) had shown that out of 180,000 commercial vehicles that registered this year, 40,000 were using LPG, saying that out of the 40,000, 81 per cent were dual consumption (using petrol and gas). Mr Okudzeto Ablakwa said the country was witnessing an unprecedented queue of commercial vehicles because of the profit nature of the use of gas, stressing, “It is worthy of note that vehicles that use gas charge the same fare as those that depend on petrol.” He said the President was greatly concerned about the challenge, hence the setting up of the team about two weeks ago. He said the Cabinet might consider the difficult decision of whether or not there could be pricing differentiation between the vehicle and domestic consumers or to remove the subsidy on it totally. According to Mr Okudzeto Ablakwa, a lot of domestic consumers preferred the LPG to be available at the market price rather than not being available at all. He said the team brought up the issue of infrastructure challenge that production was 5,000 metric tonnes a week, while consumption was 6,000 a week. The team led by the Minister of Energy made a request for funds for extra storage facility.