The African Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP) has asked the incoming Akufo Addo administration to prioritize addressing the financial challenges within the country’s power sector.
ACEP contends that if the financial challenges with firms like VRA are not decisively dealt with, the country’s power sector may face grave challenges going forward.
The Mahama administration battled a power crisis for most part of its tenure with the claim that it had been resolved in the run up to the December 7th polls but the Executive Director of ACEP, Dr. Mohammed Amin Adam insists a much more sustainable approach is required in overcoming the challenges in the power sector.
“Unless we address financial challenges of VRA as far as their indebtedness to creditors are concerned, both internal creditors and external creditors, we will never be able to position VRA to be able to add generation capacity and procure fuel. The other issue that needs to be addressed is the fuel sources that we need to look at,” Mr. Adam argued.
Channel part of oil revenue into power sector – ACEP
ACEP had earlier asked government to channel part of the country’s oil revenue to support the power sector.
The Centre argued that the suggestion, if implemented could save the nation from the recurrent power crisis in the future. ACEP estimated that Ghana needs more than $4 billion each year to support the power sector.
The head of the Policy Unit at the Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP), Ishmael Ackah said the nation cannot always depend on foreign partners for support.
“We need more to actually support power generation and distribution. I did say that since we cannot rely on external partners for everything, the MCCE is almost giving us $500 million, we should also try and find out locally what we can also get from somewhere either through government’s saving or even if we can use a little portion of the Annual Budget Funding Amount (ABFA) to support power investment.”
–
By: Marian Ansah/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Follow @EfeAnsah