Chief Executive Officer of the Association of Oil Marketing Companies, Kwaku Agyemang Duah, says OMCs across the country are struggling.

According to him, at the beginning of the year “we had almost about 40% of them who were struggling such that month-on-month they were not making anything.”

“They were only trying to survive to make sure that they just break even and others are even under the water now and they’re trying to struggle to come up.”

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He chalked the phenomenon to the strong competition in Ghana’s petroleum sector.

He stated that the country’s oil marketing sector has become saturated, which has led to stronger competition among OMCs.

According to him, the strong competition has undermined their ability to price their products as they would want to due to the fact that any sudden hikes in prices would cause consumers to shift loyalty.

“And you know in Ghana prices of goods and services are just rising just like that. And obviously for you to compete or be able to survive you need to up your scale in terms of the margin that you’d have to put on, but we’re not able to do that because it’s the market.

“The market is so competitive that if you decide to increase your margin, obviously it will affect your price, when you increase your price you’re out of the game. So it’s really a tough hurdle that we have now,” he said.

He further noted that there has been at least a 4% drop in the volume of petroleum products OMCs normally sold at the beginning of the year further exacerbating the situation.