The National Petroleum Tender Board (NPTB) on Wednesday said it has seen no reason for a change in the ex-pump prices of petroleum prices after one month of work.

"We have looked at the trend for this month. At this stage, we have not seen any reason whatsoever that there will be any need to have a change in prices," Professor Ivan Addae-Mensah, Chairman of the Board, said at a meeting in Accra attended by the Energy Minister, Dr Paa Kwesi Nduom and senior officials of the Ministry.

He said the Board, as part of its task, is to announce quarterly price adjustments and would look at the averages for the period so as not to have big adjustments Prof. Addae-Mensah said the Board has done a lot of work in less than a month since it was inaugurated and it is still collecting information on the sector that would inform its decisions.

Dr Nduom noted that the energy sector is a difficult one whose performance has affected the financial health of the country and threatening some banks. Ghana Commercial Bank is particularly overburdened by the debt at the Tema Oil Refinery.

He said the Board has a task of turning around the situation in the energy sector, although, he said, it could be a difficult one. Dr Nduom said the liberalisation of the sector is on course and would be continued.

He said, he could foresee a day when crude purchases would not be done by the government, oil marketing companies would bring in their own refined products, fuel prices would be displayed for everybody to see and that the refinery business would not be confined to government alone.

Dr Nduom said the government made several promises when it announced new petroleum prices in January and these promises have to be kept. They include the promise that this would be the last time government would announce fuel prices and that the NPTB, which would review the situation quarterly, would be constituted.

On the TOR debt, The Minister said several steps were being taken to clear it but he could not say how long it would take to clear it. He said over the next three weeks, there would be discussions on the issue after which government could indicate how long it would take to clear it and at what cost.

Dr Ndoum said he has given himself 12 months to do what he could at the Ministry because in July next year serious politics towards the 2004 elections would have begun. The first three months should be used to take every difficult decision, he said, adding that if the bulk of the work in terms of decisions, plans and initiation of action are done, the following six months would not be wasted.