Officials of Ghana’s Ministry of Finance are expected to hold discussions with independent power producers (IPPs) in the West African country, over some pressing issues in the power sector, energynewsafrica.com has learnt.
It is not clear what exactly the discussions would centre on but energynewsafrica.com believes it is likely to be on the take-or-pay contracts, which are said to be bleeding the state funds.
It would be recalled that Ghana’s Minister for Finance Ken Ofori-Atta, presenting the mid-year review budget statement in Parliament on Monday, July 29, 2019, announced that government would, from August 1, 2019, only pay Independent Power Producers for power the country consumes.
The Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, said government was going to renegotiate take-or-pay agreements because they were bleeding the state funds.
The Akufo-Addo government had accused the Mahama-administration of signing some controversial power agreements which seem to be shortchanging the country.
The NPP government claimed that, per the agreement, the country is compelled to pay power producers for power they generate but are not consumed by the country.
The Finance Minister said the country was currently paying more than $51 million a month under a take-or-pay contract for 154 mmscf per day on the Sankofa Offshore Cape Three Points gas alone, even though the country only takes 60 mmscf per day on average.
He said: “Our top technical experts, assisted by counterparts from the World Bank, have subjected the energy sector to a thorough analysis and produced the Energy Sector Reform Programme (ESRP), which identifies the key issues in the sector and proposes solutions.”
Mr Ofori-Atta said the ESRP, which has been approved by Cabinet, means that “if we continue with business as usual in the energy sector, the costs to government will increase over time to an accumulated total of over $12.5 billion by 2023.”
Source: enernynewsafrica.com
