John Jinapor, the Minister for Energy and Green Transition has revealed that Karpowership Ghana the operator of the Aboadze power barge has withdrawn its May 18 shutdown notice to cease operations.
Speaking to members of the Energy Committee of Parliament, Mr Jinapor stated, “We require about $1.1 billion to procure liquid fuel alone. Unfortunately, the liquid fuel is not part of the tariff structure, and so we will be buying close to $15 billion of liquid fuel, and that has to be paid by the central government.”
“Karpower has just sent us a letter that by the 18th, they will shut down the plant because we owe them more than $400 million. IPPs alone, we owe them $1.7 billion, and so it’s serious,” the Minister stressed.
“ECG is unable to collect all the monies, and so you are having a deficit of about 2 billion cedis every month when it comes to ECG’s collections. When you add that deficit and you add the fuel, which is not part of the pass-through, you are looking at over 30 billion,” he said.
However, in an interview on TV3, John Jinapor revealed that Karpower has withdrawn the May 18 and a roadmap has been drawn to settle the legacy debt of $400 million
“If you take Karpower for instance, we have very good meetings with them and I can tell you the good news is that they have withdrawn the May 18, deadline and that’s very positive news and that’s what we do here, we find solutions.
“We have agreed on a roadmap with Karpower and so that letter has been withdrawn. We inherited that problem, a legacy debt of $400 million,” he noted.
The information gathered also reveals Ghana’s energy debts have ballooned to over $3 billion when the debts of the state-run Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) are added.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has frequently been signalling Ghana’s energy debt as a critical risk.
Meanwhile, John Jinapor has assured Ghanaians not to panic over the power situation stating that the government has procured 450,000 barrels of light crude oil arriving this weekend.
He stated, “On fuel stock, we did indicate to them that we have 2.6 days of fuel. But I also did say that fortunately, the Ministry of Finance has supported us—we’ve procured 450,000 barrels of light crude oil arriving this weekend.”
“So, it is true that we have 2.6 days of stock, the good news is that we have 450,000 barrels coming in, so we shouldn’t panic. We will be okay. No—[there is no looming power crisis],” he assured.
