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General News on Tuesday, November 27, 2018
Source: citinewsroom.com
2018-11-27
A small glimpse of "dumsor" began to infiltrate households across the country
The long periods of irregular feeding, commonly known as "dumsor", which hit the country a few years ago, will never come back to torment the Ghanaians.
Theo Asante Darko, general manager in charge of business development at the Ghana Electricity Company (ECG), gave this badurance in an interview on Tuesday at the Citi Breakfast Show.
"Dumsor is not back and certainly will not be, at least as long as I work with ECG," he added.
Last month, many regions in Accra and other parts of the country experienced frequent power cuts. In some cases, the outages are as if there is a planned schedule that the ECG refuses to announce.
Reports indicate that unpaid public debt to electricity producers is the cause of the blackouts.
Although Energy Minister Peter Amewu conceded that the financial difficulties were partly at the origin of the current outages, he said the technical problems were largely contributing factors.
At a press conference, the minister said Monday that the West African Gas Pipeline Company Limited (WAPCO) was expecting US $ 3.2 per million BTUs to be collected as tariffs, but that the government was willing and willing to pay USD 1 per MMBtu.
He further explained that WAGPA (West Africa Pipeline Authority), the company's regulator, had, however, established a new tariff of USD 1.7 per MMBtu, that the government considers more favorable, and awaits the approval of the West African Gas Pipeline Committee of Ministers. (WAGP).
"Our main challenge has been the incomplete reverse flow project of bringing gas from west to east. We had to speed up the process bypbading the bypbad but not yet connected to the West African pipeline. This is because WAGPA has not proposed a reverse flow rate and WAPCO will not sign the toll-free Gas Transmission Agreement (GTA). WAPCO wants to pay 3.2 billion US dollars, while we want to pay 1 billion US dollars. "
However, Amewu pointed out that Ghana 's electricity supply problems and power cuts to citizens are now under control.
"The Ministry of Energy wants to badure the public that the situation is now very much under control."
Asante Darko accepted the Minister of Energy's explanation that the technical problems had been solved.
"The information provided by the Minister of Energy is correct and the situation is currently under control," he added.
Bad contracts and high debts are at the root of Ghana's energy problems – ACEP
The Executive Director of the African Center for Energy Policy, ACEP, Ben Boakye, explained that the current energy challenges of the country, which cause frequent power outages, are due to the high level of indebtedness of the sector.
According to him, the numerous electricity contracts and agreements concluded in the past have left the sector in a difficult financial situation, which makes it difficult to operate effectively.
Expressing on Citi TV's point of view, Ben Boakye said that in recent years, governments have steadily increased the sector's debts because of their inability to properly evaluate the proposed contractual agreements before to conclude them.
"The electricity sector is living with steroids because the fundamentals have not changed much. We were in crisis and we came out of the crisis to sign power purchase agreements, contracts without accurate projection of the actual demand. If we have excesses beyond what we need, it becomes a debt for us. We have continued to sign and we now have expired project purchase agreements, "he said.
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