The Deputy Minister of Energy, Dr. Kwabena Donkor has called for a national debate on the pricing of petroleum products. He said government is prepared to subsidize the prices of petroleum products if Ghanaians say so, but the economic implications of that decision should not be lost on them. Crude oil is currently selling at $64 per barrel with fears it could rise to $75 before the end of the year. The deputy minister in an interview with Citi News argued that any subsidy on petroleum products could be to the detriment of the country’s development. He said the erstwhile New Patriotic Party government lost 7 million cedis a week when the then president John Agyakum Kufuor ordered the National Petroleum Authority to freeze prices on petroleum products. Prices had hit $120 per barrel. “Is that the best or optimum use of our resources or public finances?” he quizzed, adding, government could lose 21 million cedis in six weeks to subsidy, an amount he argued could be channeled into other areas of development. “As a nation let’s decide, should we invest this 21 million in health infrastructure, in schools, in portable water, sanitation or use this money to continue to subsidize essentially petrol? Those are the hard issues that as a nation we have to decide which way. If the good people of Ghana say we should subsidize, so be it.” He has recommended an upward adjustment. But Prof Mike Ocquaye, former Energy Minister under the Kufuor administration is not the least impressed. He said the recent stance taken by government smacks of double standards. The NDC, then in opposition, criticized government of insensitivity and called for reduction in petroleum taxes as the panacea to the soaring prices in crude oil on the world market. Dr. Donkor in the August 8, 2008 edition of News File, Joy FM's news analysis programme had referred to as "intellectually lazy" the then President Kufuor's mitigation policy he announced in May. The policy which included subsidies in petroleum and other food items were to curtail the effects of the sharp increases in crude oil and food prices. Prof. Ocquaye called on government to be sincere to the public. “You know and I know the arguments their authorities made to the effect that what we were saying was wrong and that it was possible to simply reduce the price if only we were to remove the astronomical taxes that we had unilaterally imposed on Ghanaians with insensitivity. “For that matter they were best in promising, pledging, they were going to reduce not just reduce, but drastically reduce the prices,” Ocquaye said. Story by Nathan Gadugah/Myjoyonline