A former Minister for Energy, Mr. Boakye Agyarko, has made a startling revelation about the controversial Ameri Power Plant renegotiation that supposedly ended his job at the Ministry of Energy under the first term of President Nana Akufo-Addo’s administration.
According to him, an eighteen-member committee with institutional representation from the energy sector agencies was constituted and chaired by Lawyer Philip Addison and Vicky Bright.
He said the committee’s task was to renegotiate with the Africa and Middle East Resources Investment Company (Ameri Group) to make the cost of the contract lesser.
He explained that the committee did a very good job by negotiating the terms of the agreement from 14.25 per kilowatt hour to 11.7195 cents per kilowatt hour.
“Addison and Vicky, once in a while will report to me on what’s happening or if they had issues. They were also reporting to the president (Akufo-Addo). Sometimes, I will go and fill the president in on what was happening,” he said.
Speaking on an Accra-based Asempa FM on Thursday, Mr Boakye Agyarko, who is seeking to lead the New Patriotic Party in the 2024 Presidential elections, said he was not part of the committee that renegotiated the terms of the Ameri Power Plant and, therefore, was shocked why some people claimed that he had increased the cost of the plant to make money.
He revealed that someone close to President Akufo-Addo put pressure on him to act in a way that was against his will and the state, adding that the person went around, hiring people to throw dust in the eyes of Ghanaians to get him out of the ministry.
“Some people were not happy with the outcome of the Addison Committee. Suddenly, this brouhaha started that what I have done was worst than the original contact. How can 11 cents per kilowatt hour be more expensive than the contract price of 14 cents per kilowatt hour?” he quizzed.
He told the host of the programme that there was no way he could have succumbed to the demand of the person’s pressure because, in the end, his signature was going to be on the document.
“The story was that I had put something on it for myself. Committee that, I was not part of the negotiations, how could I put something on for myself?
“Here are the numbers; the original contract was 14.25 cents a kWh. When I became the minister, I called all the key power generators and told them we couldn’t pay their prices. So I suggested we standardised our KW at 4 cents a kWh because Ivory Coast is using the same gas, etc. that we are also using. But they purchase their power at 10 cents a kWh.
“So I requested we put ourselves at 12 cents a kWh, a lot of them agreed. Finally, the Addison Committee in their report gave 11.719cents a kWh.
“Maybe the school that I went to was different. But how do 11 cents become more expensive than 12 cents or 14 cents?, he quizzed.
The Ameri Power Plant was procured during the John Mahama administration at a cost of US $510 million to increase the country’s energy capacity to meet energy demand.
The agreement was signed in February 2025 under Build, Own, Operate and Transfer (BOOT) after five years.
Source: https://energynewsafrica.com