The Director-General of the State Interest and Governance Authority (SIGA), John Boadu, says the government has constituted a new board to oversee the management of the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR).

According to him, this was among the numerous measures adopted by the state to restore the oil refinery to its glory days.

This follows a 2021 State Ownership Report indicating that TOR is among 10 State-Owned Enterprises incurring losses. The oil plant has incurred an average loss of GH₵260.7 million from 2017 to 2021.

Speaking on JoyNews’ The Probe on April 14, he said the government was aware of this and has begun taking radical steps to address the problem.

“Government has put in place a new board. I was there on Friday to take them through a resolution to increase the number of their directors from nine to eleven.  

“Because their regulation requires that the maximum should be nine but ordinary resolution can give the mandate for them to increase the number to eleven.

“I have asked them that within a week, they should let me know what their plans and programmes are, and which areas we can also help,”he told host Emefa Apawu.

The former New Patriotic Party (NPP) General Secretary admitted that the government is partly responsible for TOR's debt situation because it has chosen to politicise issues rather than allow for proper management.

“One thing that sometimes it is difficult discussing, but it is something that we must discuss as a country is that, you have a government having 100% shares in TOR. Prices of products increase in the international market, for the sake of politics [they say] that if they pass it on to the consumer there would be noise, there would be this."

"The government says to keep it, I am going to support you. The government never pays. So some of these accumulated debt that you see are the results of our own inaction,” he added.

While dismissing the speculations that TOR was up for sale, he said, "I knew that there were attempts for some arrangements that did not go through."