Policy analyst Kofi Bentil has raised pointed questions about the structure of Ghana’s petroleum pricing system, arguing that consumers are being made to pay twice for the same public services and that the country is surrendering a strategic advantage by continuing to import finished fuel products despite having refinery capacity and improved access to crude.
Speaking on TV3’s KeyPoints programme on Saturday, April 11, Bentil, Senior Vice President of IMANI Africa, challenged the logic of collecting specific taxes and levies from consumers while simultaneously funding government institutions created to perform the very functions those taxes are supposed to finance. He said this duplication represented poor governance that was adding unnecessary cost to the price of fuel at the pump.
His remarks come as the government has suspended certain petroleum taxes following an emergency cabinet meeting on April 9 in response to rising global crude prices driven by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Data from the Chamber of Bulk Oil Distributors (CBOD) shows that taxes, levies, and regulatory margins collectively accounted for approximately 39 percent of the ex-pump price of petrol in the first quarter of 2026, a proportion Bentil described as ripe for review.
On the question of supply strategy, Bentil went further, arguing that Ghana was failing to think strategically about its refining capacity. He noted that the country currently operates two refineries, the state-owned Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) in Tema and the privately operated Sentuo Oil Refinery, also in Tema, and that improved global crude availability including from Russia and other non-traditional suppliers was creating conditions that should allow more processing to happen domestically. Ghana receives Russian fuel cargoes and has been assessed by Bloomberg as better insulated from the Hormuz supply shock than many of its sub-Saharan African peers, in part because of the diversity of its import sources.
Bentil argued that with this combination of domestic refining infrastructure and access to globally available crude, the continued decision to import finished petroleum products represented a failure of strategic planning rather than a market inevitability. He called for stronger governance and more deliberate policy to bring down costs for consumers and reduce the country’s import dependency.
His remarks extend an argument he has developed over several months. In March 2026, Bentil called on Ghana and the broader West Africa region to leverage its refining assets to reduce dependence on imported petroleum products. Earlier this month he called for a comprehensive reset of the petroleum economy, covering refinery organisation, the crude export paradox, and the tax structure.
