A former president of the Republic of Ghana, Mr. John Dramani Mahama, is calling on the Akufo-Addo administration to go back to the discussion table to consider privatising the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) to ensure efficiency in the company’s operations.
According to him, privatisation of ECG is very critical to ensure efficiency in its operations.
ECG is responsible for the distribution of power in the southern part of Ghana.
In 2014, the erstwhile John Mahama-led National Democratic Congress administration signed an agreement with Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), a United States Agency, for the implementation of Ghana Power Compact II.
Parts of the terms of the agreement were for ECG to be given to a concessionaire for 20 years, with the private sector participant having 80 per cent while the Ghanaian stake was 20 per cent.
After winning the 2016 General Elections and forming government in 2017, the Akufo-Addo administration, under the then Energy Minister Boakye Agyarko, restructured the stakes with the private participation (foreign) having 51 per cent while the Ghanaian stake was 41 per cent.
A Ghanaian consortium called Power Distribution Services (PDS) Limited was selected to partner with Meralco, a Philippine-based company for the deal.
However, the deal failed to go through as a result of alleged fraud.
Barely three years when the private sector participation in ECG failed, the former Ghanaian leader still believe the state power distribution company has to be privatised to inject some efficiency and improve its revenue mobilisation efforts.
Addressing participants at the ‘Leadership Series’ of the Academic City University College in Accra at the weekend, John Mahama said the privatisation of the ECG has now become critical to salvaging the company.
“It is something that we need to look at again because ECG, as the state-owned enterprise, is not able to collect its money efficiently. It needs some private sector injections,” John Mahama said.
“One of the things we need to do is to roll out prepaid meter as quickly as possible because if you have a prepaid meter, nobody will come and read your meter and bring a bill and you won’t pay and all that…”
He continued, “…And so I do believe we must still seek the privatisation of the Electricity Company of Ghana so that we can inject more investment into it because some of that money was going to provide more money for prepaid meters and also improve the efficiency of collection of bills.”
Source: https://energynewsafrica.com
