Executive Secretary of the Chamber of Petroleum Consumers (COPEC), Duncan Amoah, has warned the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) against imposing an upward adjustment of utility tariffs.
According to him, this decision will face stiff resistance from industry players should the government decide to go along with its decision to increase the tariffs.
Duncan Amoah, described the recent tariff hikes as unjustifiable and unreasonable.
“If you look at the circumstances surrounding the ECG, there are issues of accountability that render even public procurement processes and laws moot and ineffective. We have almost 2,000 containers unaccounted for, running into hundreds of millions of Cedis.
“Then, we turn back and claim we don’t have money, hence being unable to sustain operations. Therefore, we are raising tariffs. This doesn’t add up, and PURC needs to backtrack on the decision.”
Duncan Amoah further added that “coming back to the consumer to insist we pay more, I can assure will be resisted fiercely”.
The Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) announced an upward adjustment in the average end-user tariff for electricity by 14.75%, and a 4.02% increase in water tariffs across the board for all categories of consumers.
In a statement, the Commission justified the decision, stating that the adjustment is in line with its quarterly tariff review mechanism, as outlined in its rate-setting guidelines for the periodic adjustment of natural gas, electricity, and water tariffs.
According to the Commission, the adjustments are driven by four key variables: the Cedi/US dollar exchange rate, inflation, electricity generation mix, and the cost of fuel (mainly natural gas) in electricity production.
The move, the Commission explained, is intended to avoid both over-recovery and under-recovery of revenues.
In July last year, the Commission increased utility tariffs, raising electricity by 4.22% and water by 1.18%
