{"id":375092,"date":"2017-11-19T07:31:26","date_gmt":"2017-11-19T07:31:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=375092"},"modified":"2017-11-19T07:36:54","modified_gmt":"2017-11-19T07:36:54","slug":"tread-cautiously-with-electricity-tariffs-cut-imani-warns-govt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=375092","title":{"rendered":"Tread cautiously with electricity tariffs cut \u2013 IMANI warns gov\u2019t"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Akufo-Addo government has been asked to tread cautiously with the proposed review of electricity tariffs.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking on <strong>Citi FM\u2019s<\/strong> news analysis programme <strong>&#8216;The Big Issue&#8217;<\/strong> on Saturday, President of policy think tank, IMANI Ghana, Franklin Cudjoe, said although reduction in electricity tariffs \u201cis a good thing, we must be very cautious.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>[contextly_sidebar id=&#8221;egb7Tw5GJABrEXffKBD7V97GJdGD0ozH&#8221;]The Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, while presenting the 2018 budget statement to Parliament last Wednesday, said government has recommended to the Public Utility Regulatory Commission (PURC) a <span style=\"color: #666699;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/2017\/11\/15\/ghbudget-electricity-tariffs-to-be-reduced-by-13\/\"><strong>review of electricity tariffs<\/strong><\/a><\/span> by between 13 and 21 percent.<\/p>\n<p>But according to Franklin Cudjoe, government must make sure the review does not adversely affect Ghana\u2019s debt profiling of the energy sector.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere is a debt profiling known as ESLA in place, and we ought to be careful because we are not out of the woods yet, when it comes to our generating capacity. The fact that some persons do not pay the tariffs on time, the fact that there are technical and commercial losses, this may as well affect the debt restructuring procedure,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p>Government in the past subsidized electricity tariffs aimed at <span style=\"color: #666699;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/2016\/07\/04\/ecg-confirms-new-subsidies-debunks-any-change-in-tariff-structure\/\"><strong>cushioning businesses<\/strong><\/a><\/span> and domestic consumers following intense pressure from the public.<\/p>\n<p>Some had described the tariffs as \u201ckiller tariffs.\u201d Meanwhile, the subsidy cost government millions of Ghana cedis.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;<\/p>\n<p>By: Farida Yusif\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Akufo-Addo government has been asked to tread cautiously with the proposed review of electricity tariffs. Speaking on Citi FM\u2019s news analysis programme &#8216;The Big Issue&#8217; on Saturday, President of policy think tank, IMANI Ghana, Franklin Cudjoe, said although reduction in electricity tariffs \u201cis a good thing, we must be very cautious.\u201d [contextly_sidebar id=&#8221;egb7Tw5GJABrEXffKBD7V97GJdGD0ozH&#8221;]The Finance [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":221812,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,11],"tags":[14717,3803,584,3,3545],"class_list":["post-375092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-slider-1","category-top-stories","tag-electricity-tariff-reduction","tag-finance-minister","tag-franklin-cudjoe","tag-ghana-news","tag-imani-ghana"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=375092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375092\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/221812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=375092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=375092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=375092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}