Economic Advisor at the Office of the Vice President, Dr. Tiah Abdul-Kabiru Mahama, says government’s delegation negotiating an oil deal with the United Arab Emirates will wrap up negotiations next week.

It would be recalled that President Akufo-Addo in his broadcast to the nation revealed that his government is working to stabilise prices of petroleum products through new supply arrangements in a bid to tackle the high cost of living.

The Deputy Energy Minister, Andrew Egyapa Mercer, Managing Director of Bulk Oil Storage Transportation Limited, Edwin Provencal and National Petroleum Authority Boss, Mustapha Abdul-Hamid are the key members leading the negotiation.

After two weeks of negotiating with big oil players including the Chief Executive of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), Sultan Al Jaber, the team is expected to make known the conclusion of the negotiations by next week.

Speaking on JoyNews’ Newsfile on Saturday, Dr. Mahama stated, “The team will actually wrap up this negotiation next week and that is going to; probably will take also a higher level engagement after they have done the technical and ground works.

“So in the course of next week, we expect to have some communication as to the finality of this discussion with the partners or the bilateral discussion thereafter. I’m sure they’ve been there for about two weeks, I’m sure the conclusion is in the offing.”

Meanwhile, he noted that government is taking measures to address the fuel issue sustainably.

"We have Sentio which is a private refinery coming on stream, that will be the first quarter of next month. We’re working to ensure that TOR is revived so that domestic production of crude will be something that we can rely on, we can have some predictability, we can have some certainty of supply which is not going to be affected by forex or exchange rate situation,” he said.

He added that government is also working at reducing the import bill even though an outright ban is out of the picture.

“We’re also trying as much as possible to reduce the import bill, and government announced that rice, oil, tin tomatoes and etc would be…you see government could go for a ban, but the implication of a ban considering the fact that we have WTO who is on non-prohibitive tariff regimes in the basket makes it difficult for government to take any of these drastic measures.

“But in times of crisis like this, government can go for restriction of forex and to conserve forex for essential things,” he said.