The Institute for Energy Security (IES) has urged the Energy and Finance Ministries to promptly allocate funds to address the current energy sector difficulties.
IES highlighted that the sector’s current issues stem mainly from inadequate liquidity for purchasing fuel to power certain plants at full capacity.
They stressed the urgency for the two Ministries to resolve this issue.
Additionally, IES reiterated the importance of equipping ECG with resources to reduce technical and commercial losses, deploy more smart meters to detect theft, and improve distribution efficiency to increase revenue.
These measures, they emphasized, are crucial for ECG to fulfill its mission of providing quality, reliable, and safe electricity services to support Ghana’s economic growth and development.
IES’s recommendation follows recent sanctions imposed by the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) on the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) for regulatory violations. Nana Amoasi VII, Executive Director of IES, emphasized to the Ghana News Agency that liquidity challenges have hindered scheduled maintenance of some plants, resulting in outages.
“We expect the Ministry of Energy to coordinate and work with the Ministry of Finance to find alternative funding sources to deal with the challenge, thus, to procure fuel to get some of the power plants online,” Nana Amoasi VII said.
Regarding the regulatory sanctions, he explained that PURC’s action was essential to signal to other service providers the regulator’s preparedness to penalize any violators of sector regulations.
“The current action is consistent with the oversight responsibility that PURC must have over the industry,” he said and encouraged ECG to oblige with the orders of the Regulator.
Nana Amoasi also called on the Regulator to impose further sanctions on ECG if it fails to meet the April 22 payment deadline to PURC and the April 30 payment deadline to cash waterfall mechanism beneficiaries.
The Public Utilities Regulatory Commission instructed ECG’s Management and Board to settle GHS446,283,706.29 by April 30, 2024, to ‘Category B’ beneficiaries of the cash waterfall mechanism. This directive follows ECG’s failure to pay shortfalls from August 2023 to February 2024 to beneficiaries by March 25, 2024.
Additionally, PURC imposed an initial regulatory charge of 3,000 penalty units totaling GHS36,000 on ECG for not submitting details of all bank accounts to the Commission. This charge is due by April 22, 2024.
According to Mr. Ishmael Edjekumhene, a PURC Commissioner, the commission has not received any updates on ECG’s actions regarding payment or negotiations on the sanctions.
Last month, Mr. Sam Dubik Mahama, Managing Director of ECG, emphasized the importance of consumers promptly settling their bills to boost revenue and improve the company’s operational efficiency.
Meanwhile, the Energy Commission’s 2024 Energy Outlook for Ghana emphasizes the necessity for significant investments in the energy and electricity sub-sector. Specifically, there is a need for improved reliability in gas supply due to the increasing reliance on natural gas for power generation.