Fuel price hikes: GPRTU to adopt automatic adjustment formula for transport fares

Henceforth, transport fares will be adjusted automatically anytime fuel prices go up more than 10 per cent cumulatively, the Ghana Private Road Transport Union (GPRTU) has announced.

The Union said the recent 15 per cent increment in transport fares, which took effect on February 26, 2022, was based on previous increment in fuel prices and that it would review transport fares upwards by 10 per cent if the gradual increments in fuel prices crossed 10 per cent.

Mr Richard Yaw Amankwah, Deputy General Secretary in Charge of Operations, GPRTU, told the Ghana News Agency that the Union was worried about the rising cost of fuel at the pumps, hence it’s decision to benchmark transport fares against fuel prices to sustain the transport business.

“We have indicated that whenever fuel prices go up above 10 per cent as of the time, we were increasing transport fares (February 26), we will adjust the fares upwards.

“So, we are still monitoring the prices. Even today it has gone up, so we are just marking time. When it is up to the 10 per cent increase, the same margin would be added to the transport fares,” he said.

Private commercial transport operators had initially proposed a 30 per cent increment in transport fares ahead of its negotiations with the Government last month.

The transport operators, after three successive meetings with the Government, agreed to reduce the rate to 15 per cent. The new rate took effect on Saturday, February 26, 2022.

Mr Amankwah said the implementation of the new rate had been smooth across the country despite initial agitation by some operators about the rate.

“It was in Ashaiman that we had some problem on the day it started but we quickly intervened. Apart from Ashaiman, we have not heard any problem all over the country,” he said.

Ex-pump prices for petrol and diesel went up by some 30 pesewas per litre on March 1, 2022, trading at an average GHC 8.20.

Some market analysts have projected that prices at the pumps could shoot up to GHC9.0 per litre if nothing was done to check the rate at which the cedi is depreciating against the US Dollar.

The continuous rise in the price of Brent Crude on the international market has also been blamed for the instability in prices of petroleum products locally.

The Institute for Energy Security (IES) had projected that the prices of petrol and diesel would go up by at least 4 per cent this week, citing the performance of the cedi against the Dollar as a major catalyst.

In its review of the February 2022 Second Pricing Window, the IES found that the cedi depreciated by 4.11 per cent to close at GHC6.85 to the Dollar in the last pricing window.

The Chamber of Petroleum Consumers (COPEC) had also projected that ex-pump prices of petrol, diesel and LPG would increase by about 4.6 per cent, 3.4 per cent, and 2.5 per cent respectively from March 1, 2022.

It projected that both petrol and diesel would trade at an average GHC8.190 per litre whereas LPG would sell around GHC9.163 per kilogram in the First Pricing Window of March 2022.