Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia on Wednesday said the government will digitise distribution of pre-mix fuel this year to crack down on the frequent smuggling of the product and ensure efficiency so that only registered boats enjoy government’s subsidies on the commodity.

He said the team working on the digitisation of the commodity has been given four weeks to finalise the process, noting that after successful implementation, it would extend the technology to fertilizer distribution next year.
This, according to Dr Bawumia, would ensure efficiency in the premix fuel distribution to curb hoarding and other malpractices carried out in the sector.

He said the government had been leveraging on digital technology to improve efficiency in the public service delivery and mentioned the digitisation of the port operations, driver’s application and licensing regime, business registration, mobile money interoperability and the ongoing efforts to digitise the lands records.

Vice President Bawumia announced this at the opening of the third edition of the Ghana International Petroleum Conference (GhipCon) in Accra on Wednesday, held on the theme,” Regional Collaboration: A Catalyst for Transformation”.

The conference was organised by the Ministry of Energy and National Petroleum Authority in collaboration with the Chamber of Bulk Oil Distributors, which attracted petroleum experts, policy-makers, businessmen and women and captains of industry in the sub-region.

It is designed to actively bring to the fore the operating industry’s perspectives and guidance on issues of governmental and regulatory policy as well as best practices for the advancement of the petroleum downstream sector across the West African sub-region.

It will also afford stakeholders in the petroleum downstream industry in West African sub-region, to harmonise their policies and explore opportunities to allow the industry to respond to global development and trends consistent with member countries’ interests and aid in their economic transformation.