Overview

The discovery of commercial oil and gas reserves in the Jubilee field in 2007 present Ghana with a great opportunity for development.  Indeed, the World Bank conservatively estimates potential government revenue to be about US$1.0 billion on average per year between 2011 and 2029.

However, the flow of huge sums of money into government coffers raises concerns about revenue management. Great care is needed to ensure that Ghana avoids the curse of other resource-rich developing countries in which poor management of natural resource revenues has eroded rather than improved the social, economic and environmental position of the country.

Civil society must play a key role in combating the resource curse in Ghana. The IEA will be playing its part through two related programmes.  These are:

•   the creation of a Petroleum Transparency and Accountability (P-TRAC) Index; and

•  the Building Institutional Capacity for Effective Petroleum Revenue Scrutiny (BICEPS) programme.