Power sector should be run by private organisations – ACEP boss

Policy think tank Imani Africa convened stakeholders in the energy sector on June 14th, 2024, to discuss the recent power challenges in the country.

Benjamin Boakye, Director of the Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP), posited that “dumsor” is a persistent issue in the country due to a lack of funds for plant operations, stating that the more debt managers of the economy pile up, the greater the precariousness of the situation.

“How does “dumsor” become a thing of the past? is here and has been here. If you don’t have money to run the plants, the problems will be there, and we have seen the problems exist and are pretending that they don’t exist. For me, if you are an industry watcher, that is what is even more worrying because the more debt you pile, the more precarious the sector gets. You may have power plants, but you can’t put fuel in them; you can’t get them running, and the worst of it is that when you politically run them, what it means is that you are sacrificing development to buy fuel for power plants that should be run economically by those who are consuming the power,” he explained.

Mr. Boakye proposed that the power sector should ideally be managed and run by the private sector instead, adding that the government cannot both run and regulate the sector.

“More importantly, we need to depoliticize the power sector. We keep saying that we need to deepen the private sector’s participation in space and then empower the state regulator to be able to regulate the energy sector, and it is done everywhere where the government regulates itself; it doesn’t work, and we keep talking about this and nobody is taking action, but we need to allow that private sector to invest the money,” he said.

According to him, $6 billion every year goes into the energy sector through the Delta and ESLA funds, which could have been used for other social interventions, including eliminating schools under trees and sponsoring treatments for patients on dialysis.

He charged Ghanaians to demand a timetable from ECG to plan their lives, regardless of the political or technocratic labelling of the power interruptions.

Mr. Boakye further argued that Ghana’s decision to cease power exports to African countries was a mistake, as the revenue generated could be used to sustain the plants during challenging times.
He emphasised the need for enhanced collaboration within the power sector to ensure a comprehensive resolution of its persistent crisis.

Founder and Executive Director of the Consumer Protection Agency, Kofi Kapito, submitted that Ghanaians do not have any contract with GRIDCO nor VRA but with ECG, and ECG is duty-bound to provide reliable electricity to consumers.

He said, however, that the ECG, a crucial part of the distribution chain, relies on GRIDCO and VRA for power supply, and Ghanaians should not solely blame them for the erratic power supply.

“ECG is challenged, and I think sometimes they need to say it more loudly because they’re the last leg of the whole distribution chain, so if they don’t get it from the IPPs, GRIDCO, and VRA, how do we get it? And if they don’t come out with information for you to be informed that these are their challenges, we will all blame ECG,” Kapito noted.

He said that with an expected rise in utility tariffs in January 2025, the PURC must ensure utility consumers get value for money as regards the increased rates consumers would be paying.

Kofi Kapito added that the government’s failure to pay the utility debts of state agencies and cut them off from the main distribution network is partly to blame for “dumsor”.