Posted
on: www.dailyguideghana.com
By
William Yaw Owusu
Thursday,
December 03, 2015
Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, running mate to the New
Patriotic Party (NPP) flagbearer, Nana Akufo-Addo, says President John Dramani
Mahama’s litany of unfulfilled promises as regards solving the power crisis
shows the President has lost it.
He counted not less than 21 promises made by
President Mahama and a host of his appointees since September 2012 when the
power crisis started, and came to the conclusion that the NDC government is not
serious about solving the power crisis which is wreaking havoc on the economy.
“Solving dumsor (power crisis) clearly has
not been a priority these past four years for the Mahama-led NDC government and
may only become a priority as we get close to the election.”
He said President Mahama’s latest comments
in Tamale that ‘dumsor will end before the 2016 Election’ exposed the thinking
of the NDC government and the President.
“For the President and his government, dumsor
is not an economic issue but a political issue. They care little about the
businesses dumsor has collapsed or the jobs dumsor has collapsed in the past
four years. Rather, their major concern is what can be used come the election
year and what cannot be used,” he told journalists.
Addressing the NPP’s news conference on the
party’s response to the 2016 budget statement presented to Parliament recently
by the NDC government through the Finance Minister Seth Terkper, Dr Bawumia
asked: “Why is it that after four years of trying, the government has still not
found a solution to the problem? The simple answer is that the government has
been in denial and has not prioritised this issue.”
Political
Tool
“The government has borrowed $3 billion in
the last three years from the issue of Eurobonds alone. In total, government
has borrowed the equivalent at the time of borrowing of $37 billion. How much
of these borrowed funds have been used to address the dumsor problem? If this
was a priority for government, the necessary allocation of resources would have
been made to solve it.”
Power
Barge
Dr Bawumia said the Karpower Barge agreement
signed by the government to supply 225 mw of power with a reported $100 million
guarantee from the GNPC did not make sense at all.
“A 225 mw plant like the Karpower plant will
cost some $225 million and we will own it – with the unit cost of a megawatt
plant at $1 million. Under the Karpower deal, we will pay for the power from
the barge for the next 10 years whether we use it or not.”
He said an energy policy think tank, ACEP,
estimated that based on the capacity charge alone, which is 5.6cents per kWh,
it will cost Ghana some $1 billion for 10 years and that however excluded the
fuel cost of a requirement of 35,000 tonnes per month.
“After 10 years the barge will sail away;
when we could have built a 1,000 megawatt plant for ourselves. Power from the
barge would also cost at least twice that supplied currently from Takoradi.
This really does not make sense.
"We could buy an equivalent of the
Karpower Plant for $225 million and own it. Instead, we're renting for 10 years
costing us $1 billion," he said.
Dumsor Dynamics
Dr Bawumia said “it is a fact that this
government inherited an economy without dumsor in 2009. By 2012 however dumsor
was the order of the day.
“In response, Government started a promising
spree which with hindsight shows either they did not quite understand the
problem or they were deliberately misleading Ghanaians.”
He said the current energy crisis is not a
result of inadequately installed capacity but rather “a lack of financial
resources to utilise the installed capacity.
“Installed capacity in Ghana stands at
2,923.5 mw, with peak system demand at 2,200.0 mw, leaving excess capacity over
demand of 723.5 mw.
Government is highly indebted to VRA and ECG. Government
owes ECG some GH¢700 million and owes VRA GH¢1.0 billion. VRA owes its
creditors, including Nigeria Gas and West Africa Pipeline Company, a total of
$1.3 billion.”
He said as a result, it has “compromised the
balance sheet of VRA and its ability to import crude oil for the generation of
power,” adding that “currently, VRA has shut down a number of its plants
because it is unable to purchase fuel to run them. Ghana owes Nigeria Gas some
US$170 million which the country is struggling to pay.”
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