In the next few months Ghana will be drilling its first barrel of crude oil from the Jubilee Fields in the Cape Three Point in the Western Region.

The discovery of oil in commercial quantities has generated a lot of excitement and expectations of all sorts.

Though the country's discovery is relatively modest by international standards, it is large enough to make a dent on the future of a non-oil economy.

Ghana expects to drill 120,000 barrels per day at the initial stages, but has the capacity to drill over 800,000 barrels in future.

It is therefore the expectation of all that the country will derive maximum benefit from the find through high development returns.

But without sufficient preparations, and misuse of oil revenue could lead to a decline in per capita incomes.

In Africa there are a few countries that have discovered oil and yet the per capita income of these countries are nothing to write home about. Chad discovered oil about 30 years ago yet it is one of the poorest countries in the world.

About 80 per cent of its seven million people live on less than a dollar a day. Gabon another rich oil producing country is yet to make the best use of this natural resources.

In Angola, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea and our neighbouring country Nigeria are yet to use oil revenue to the benefit of all their citizens.

This, therefore, means that the current oil boom in Africa is yet to translate into any tangible benefits for the poor people.

Previous boom in Nigeria produced a large uptick in spending which was unsustainable and not targeted at poverty reduction.

According to the African Development Report of 2007, overall resource-rich countries in Africa have experienced lower growth rates than resource-scarce countries.

Since the oil find in 2007, a lot of activities have taken place by bringing in various stakeholders together to deliberate on the development and better utilisation of the oil revenue.

The issue currently bothering the minds of the average Ghanaian is how will the oil revenue be used considering the bad examples of what is happening in other oil producing countries in Africa.

The current laws relating to the fiscal regime of oil in Ghana are the Petroleum (Exploration and production) Law, PNDC Law 84, the Petroleum Income Tax Law, PNDC Law 188.

These laws provide broad guidelines and key elements to be contained in contracts. As of now there are no specific regulations governing the upstream and midstream production of oil.

Two years ago a draft on Ghana's petroleum regulatory authority bill was published and presented to Parliament with a view to its eventual enactment. This document is yet to see the light of day.

By now we should have laws that will govern the operations and management of oil revenue. But this is not the case.

The non availability of such effective regulatory bodies and institutions can serve as a good ground for breeding corruption, mismanagement and application of oil revenue.

A lot of authorities have made various projections of the total revenue that the country may derive from the oil find. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has projected that government revenue from oil and gas could reach a cumulative US$20 billion over the production period of 2010 to 2030 for the Jubilee Fields alone.