Chief Executive Officer of the Association of Oil Marketing Companies, Kwaku Agyemang Duah has stated that a substantial number of OMCs are having a hard time making profits due to the current state of the economy.

He noted that 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,” he said this on JoyNews’ PM Express Business edition on July 14, 2023.

Agyemang Duah said the country’s inflation and the depreciation of the cedi have had a damning effect on their pricing, however, OMCs do not have the luxury of increasing or adjusting their margins as they deem fit due to the competitive nature of the oil market.

This he said was another factor that affects their profit margins.

“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.

Duah continued, “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.

SSD/MA