Former Deputy Minister of Power, John Jinapor has cautioned the Akufo Addo-led government not to be clouded by political expediency into making wrong judgement, while it proceeds to review some of the Power Purchase Agreements(PPA) the country entered into under the esrtwhile John Mahama administration.
According to him, in as much as the government has the power to review such agreements it must ensure that it does so within the law and must be one which will be in the interest of the state.
Hon. Jinapor who is the current Member of Parliament for Yapei-Kusawgu was commenting on the revelation by President Akufo Addo during his first presentation of State of the Nation Address in Parliament on Tuesday 21, that his administration intends to assess the PPA’s entered into by the previous govenment.
“As at the end of 2016, the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) had signed 43 Power Purchase Agreements (PPA), whilst a further 23 were under discussion. Government is conducting a review of all the Power Agreements entered into by the previous government in order to prioritise, renegotiate, defer or cancel outright, if necessary, in the national interest.
Overall, we have begun to develop a national electricity masterplan, which will also explore the benefits of listing VRA and GRIDCO on the Stock Exchange.”
Speaking on Asempa FM’s Eko Sii Sen show Tuesday, Hon. John Jinapor stated that some of the PPA are very good which should not be touched, while others have exit clauses.
“Every govrnment has the right to review…to do whatever they want to do once they do that within the law. If they choose to review they should do that cautiously and not be clouded by political expediency into making bad judgement. Some of PPAs are very good, some of them are there…the companies have already signed but are not able to raise financing, there are exit clauses that will have to be looked at.
He added: We [NDC governement] wrote a cabinet memo indicating we wanted to rationalize the PPAs and phase out some of them. Because when we had emergency power, it made our power system much more reliable. We had already started talks with some of the companies and we were doing so in good faith so that over all we’ll have a positive effect of it.
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