{"id":228533,"date":"2016-07-06T15:58:38","date_gmt":"2016-07-06T15:58:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=228533"},"modified":"2016-07-06T15:58:38","modified_gmt":"2016-07-06T15:58:38","slug":"weve-not-introduced-electricity-subsidies-mahama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/2016\/07\/weve-not-introduced-electricity-subsidies-mahama\/","title":{"rendered":"We&#8217;ve not introduced electricity subsidies &#8211; Mahama"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>President John Dramani Mahama appears to have contradicted the Power Ministry and the Electricity Company of Ghana\u2019s (ECG) recent announcement of subsidies for low level power consumers, saying ECG has\u00a0only realigned their billing structure.<\/p>\n<p>According to the President, the ECG realigned the billing system in a bid to make the billing process more transparent.<\/p>\n<p>[contextly_sidebar id=&#8221;4q6dhb07KO8Nvh9wdb3nBbzi9HgiP2Ag&#8221;]\u201cIt is not a subsidy. It is a realignment of the billing system that makes it possible for us to be able to know how much we are spending on electricity,\u201d the President said in an address to Muslims on the occasion of\u00a0Eid al-Fitr.<\/p>\n<p>The ECG announced a <span style=\"color: #666699;\"><strong><a style=\"color: #666699;\" href=\"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/2016\/07\/04\/ecg-revises-tariff-introduces-subsidies-full-list\/\">revision of utility tariffs<\/a><\/strong><\/span> in the country, and the introduction of new subsidies to cushion low level consumers of electricity.<\/p>\n<p>The Deputy Power Minister, John Jinapor, <span style=\"color: #666699;\"><strong><a style=\"color: #666699;\" href=\"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/2016\/07\/04\/new-electricity-bills-to-bring-relief-to-users-john-jinapor\/\">further explained<\/a><\/strong><\/span> that the new subsidies are in categories and bands and were expected to bring relief to users.<\/p>\n<p>But critics including the Integrated Social Development Center (ISODEC), are skeptical over the subsidies and have called for a reduction of levies\u00a0on electricity tariffs instead.\u00a0The Minority Spokesperson on Energy, K.T. Hammond, also\u00a0lambasted government over the supposed\u00a0subsidy, and said it <span style=\"color: #666699;\"><strong><a style=\"color: #666699;\" href=\"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/2016\/07\/06\/electricity-subsidy-makes-no-sense-kt-hammond\/\">made no sense<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Realignment will bring transparency to billing<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>But President Mahama appears to have made nonsense of all the criticisms and the noise about subsidies, by claiming that what the ECG did was only a realignment of its billing system, to bring some\u00a0form of relief to power consumers.<\/p>\n<p>According to the President, \u201cThey [ECG] have done a realignment of their billing system and I believe that people can begin to see some relief in terms of the bills they were paying.\u00a0The bills have been made more transparent so that you can tell with every unit you buy how much the value of the unit is,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Dr. Wereko Brobbey disagrees<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A former CEO of the Volta River Authority (VRA) and policy analyst, Dr Charles Wrekko Brobbey, had already rejected\u00a0claims of subsidies\u00a0saying Government was not being truthful.<\/p>\n<p>Following the announcement on Monday, he insisted to <strong>Citi Business News<\/strong> that no subsidy had been introduced.<\/p>\n<p>According to Dr. Brobby, \u201cIt is not true; you are being charged VAT, energy levies, street light among others and those have gone up from almost 1 to about 5 percent\u2026when you say you are subsidizing something, it means you are charging below how much it costs. But here is the case that you (government) are giving with the left hand, yet you are taking with the right.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>ECG introduces new tariffs<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The ECG announced it had <span style=\"color: #666699;\"><strong><a style=\"color: #666699;\" href=\"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/2016\/07\/04\/ecg-revises-tariff-introduces-subsidies-full-list\/\">revised utility tariffs<\/a><\/strong><\/span> in the country effective July 1.\u00a0The company in the new tariffs said it had introduced new subsidies to cushion low level consumers of electricity.<\/p>\n<p>This followed red flags raised by businesses and individuals \u00a0early this year, about\u00a0what they called \u201ckiller tariffs\u201d following the outrageous bills they had to\u00a0pay.<\/p>\n<p>The ECG has earlier\u00a0said the\u00a0subsidy will affect about 400,000 out of the 3.1 million customers including non-residential, with about 2.3 million being residential, \u00a0and were expected to last for six months and expected to cost the government some GHc 300 million.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;<\/p>\n<p>By: Delali Adogla-Bessa\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>President John Dramani Mahama appears to have contradicted the Power Ministry and the Electricity Company of Ghana\u2019s (ECG) recent announcement of subsidies for low level power consumers, saying ECG has\u00a0only realigned their billing structure. According to the President, the ECG realigned the billing system in a bid to make the billing process more transparent. [contextly_sidebar [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":225587,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10,11],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>We&#039;ve not introduced electricity subsidies - Mahama - Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. 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