Establish linkages to benefit from the oil industry — Jourdan

Story: Albert K. Salia
A CONSULTANT to the African Development Bank (AfDB), Dr Paul Jourdan, has stressed the need for the government and industry to establish the right linkages so as to make the country benefit more from the oil industry.
He explained that such a linkage should see to the facilitation of the parallel development of the non-oil sectors which would result in a more balanced and sustainable growth trajectory.
Dr Jourdan was speaking at a forum organised by the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI) in Accra yesterday to see how the local content of the oil discovery could be exploited to benefit local industries.
He said the problem of Ghana and for that matter Africa had been the very limited successes in establishing local resource linkages in the various productive sectors.
Using the gold mining industry as an example of failure, Dr Jourdan said since independence, Ghana had had a gold mining industry but was struggling to establish upstream and down-stream linkages in terms of inputs, refining and fabrication.
He said the mining industry was dominated by foreign firms who were reaping the benefits more than the communities and the country in which they operated.
He said if care was not taken, such a case would happen in the oil and gas industry.
Dr Jourdan said there was, therefore, the need for a new mindset to enable Ghana and Africa to succeed.
According to him, there were lots of economic opportunities which the government should facilitate for the local industries to take advantage of.
Some of these, he indicated, were the availability of local resources, which could be used instead of importing everything, local skilled labour and access to competitively priced feedstocks such as steel.
Dr Jourdan said the government could establish a cluster of businesses which the oil companies would deal with in the supply of services.
He said it was important that some of the businesses entered into alliances so as to strengthen their capacities and capabilities to benefit from the oil boom.
He said the government should also facilitate the transfer of skills to Ghanaians, since most of the specialised skills needed would have to be imported.
The Managing Director of Caribbean Energy Specialists (CES), Mr Anthony Paul, said although there were lots of business opportunities to be exploited, so were there barriers which needed to be overcome.
According to him, lack of finance, technology and skilled labour were some of the barriers which local companies needed to overcome to take advantage of the oil industry.
The President of the AGI, Mr Tony Oteng-Gyasi, said little time was allocated for discussion on the local content of the oil industry at the just-ended forum on Oil and Gas.
He said it was to avoid the situation where foreign companies took over the oil sector where all the revenue was repatriated leaving the locals poor that the AGI organised the forum.