Accra, Ghana//-Members of Ghana’s Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC), the statutory body with oversight responsibility over the prudent management and use of petroleum revenues, are worried that the 2025 Petroleum Revenue Management (Amendment) Act, 2025 (Act 1138), is crippling their work.
According to them, these unilateral amendments, if not checked, could jeopardise the growth and development of the country’s burgeoning oil and gas industry.
Leading the charge on a virtual media engagement, the PIAC Coordinator, Isaac Dwamena, said: “If things continue the same way as PIAC has experienced this year, the future is bleak for PIAC”.
He added that PIAC is required by Legislative Instrument 2381 to conduct at least two public engagements on its mandate every year. This year, the Committee has conducted only one, and even that was funded by Go Governance Africa, an NGO.
“That public engagement was held in the Ashanti Region somewhere in May or June 2025, thereabout. PIAC has failed to conduct the second one primarily because of funding. So, if things continue this way, PIAC which is required to monitor other institutions to comply with the revenue management rules, will be breaching the Act by itself”, Mr Dwamena who is trained lawyer told the journalists.
The future is not very bright for PIAC. So, something must to be done, he stated.
More implications of the amendments
The Coordinator also revealed PIAC had been off the Annual Budget Funding Amount (ABFA) funding and put in the consolidated fund.
This implied that the government returned PIAC to pre-2015 era, where it used to draw its funding from the consolidated fund.
Mr Dwamena also revealed that PIAC this year received from Ministry of Finance (MoF) an average of 31.02 % of its annual budget for programmes and activities.
The 2015 Amendment resulted in a stable, predictable and guaranteed funding for PIAC’s work. From 2016 to 2024, the Committee received an average of 85.53 % of its annual budget.
However, the current amendments Mr Dwamena and his team said are not good and could be underproductive for the country’s oil and gas industry.
Contributing to the discussion, another member of PIAC, Madam Sena Dake, said the difficulties that PIAC is experiencing now puts PIAC at the point of tipping, and that is not good for the country as a whole.
“This is because PIAC becomes like the independent arm of civil society and also serves the public interest. This is the only opportunity that citizens have a way of contributing to the verification process of projects that are being undertaken in their communities”, Madam Dake emphasised.
This is where citizens and the public can even see and appreciate what the government is doing for them using the funds that they have been allocated for this purpose.
It is going to be very sadden, if strategic actions are not taking to support PIAC, because PIAC has this independent that a lot of stakeholders believe in.
