Samuel Dubik Mahama, the former Managing Director of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), has shut down NDC’s government proposal for private sector participation in ECG.
The former ECG MD asserted that private sector participation is already integrated at the metering level.
Appearing before the Appointments Committee of Parliament on Monday, January 13, John Abdulai Jinapor the energy minister-designate has revealed the Mahama administration believes there should be private sector participation in the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG).
Speaking on Channel One TV’s The Point of View, Samuel Dubik Mahama stated, “I do admit that there are a few inefficiencies in the company, and in the same way, there are a few efficiencies. Now before you do any private sector privatisation what are the benchmarks? Let’s not forget there is already private sector participation in ECG”.
Dubik Mahama further detailed, “At the metering point under the loss reduction programme. Under this programme, the ECG has moved from its previous position where it used to look for a large sum of money to purchase meters to come and install. That is one thing that I decided to change when I became the Managing Director and I had a discussion with the board, which was that looking for cash or capital to purchase meters, for usage, doesn’t make sense”.
“Why don’t we get all these metering companies and tell everybody to have a factory in the country? Based on that, we now have about 7 metering companies that have factories in Ghana. What we then did was to give them a locality to install their meters…And that is private sector participation, if you do the math very well, you realise that it saved us a lot. More than almost 50% in how much you now have to borrow and all those administrative costs”, he added.
Samuel Dubik Mahama revealed the main problem at ECG is buying electricity in dollars and selling it in cedis.
“The first one is forex… you buy the electricity in dollars and you come to sell it in cedis. And you go and look for requisite dollars to go and pay…If you are going to look for USD to pay the Independent Power Producers (IPPs), will the money be enough to pay the whole value chain?”, he stated.
