In its first four months, the Bono East Regional Office of the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) has recovered GHS 123,927.86 for the Northern Electricity Distribution Company (NEDCo).
Notably, Bui Sugar Limited at Banda received a credit adjustment of GHS 35,643.10.
This recovery aligns with the Commission’s 2024 theme, “a year of strategic impact,” and addresses an undercharge issue from several months in 2023 caused by meter under-readings at the factory.
Following investigations, the regional office resolved the issue during the initial settlement meeting, earning praise from both parties for its timely and professional handling.
Established on March 1, 2024, in Techiman, the Bono East Regional Office is the Commission’s eleventh office and the first in the newly created administrative regions.
Its activities, aimed at decentralizing operations and enhancing service quality, include complaint management, public education, and visibility campaigns through street walks, leaflet distribution, and mass media outreach.
Approximately 4 million liters of alcohol are anticipated to be produced from Bui Sugar Limited when it commences its operations, according to Eric Opoku Acheampong, the Deputy Director of Lands and Impact at Bui Power Authority.
In an interview on GhanaWeb TV’s BizTech program hosted by Ernestina Serwaa Asante, he revealed that the sugarcane plantation spans across 6,000 hectares of land in the Bui region.
Mr. Opoku Acheampong further explained that Bui Sugar Limited is projected to process a total of 6,000 metric tonnes of sugar each year.
During the interview with BizTech host Ernestina Serwaa Asante, he mentioned that the Bui Sugar Limited project, which commenced approximately a year and a half ago, is expected to provide employment opportunities for 1,000 individuals within the Bui enclave.
Currently, around 200 people are employed and actively working on the farmland.
Addressing concerns about the project’s sustainability, the Deputy Director of Lands and Impact at BPA emphasized that measures have been put in place to ensure that it does not suffer the same fate as the well-known Komenda Sugar Factory. He explained that adequate infrastructure and raw materials for processing have been secured to support its success.
“This sugarcane plantation is going to be the biggest in the whole country…we are going to plant about 6,000 hectares of land for sugarcane. Based on it, we are going to do a processing plant. The processing plant will process about 60,000 metric tonnes of sugar annually and so, we’ll produce about 4 million litres of alcohol out of it,” Mr Opoku Acheampong told host of BizTech, Ernestina Serwaa Asante.
He added that, “We are developing the base for the factory so we will always operate…when we finish with the base, then we’ll also help the farmers around who will want to enter into sugarcane production then we assist them with the facilities to be able to add to what we have.”
Touching on employment, he said, “Because this is the beginning of the project, so far, we are rolling between 150 to 200 at a time but at the full operation, we’re targeting about 1,000 employees at this place…”
Eric Opoku Acheampong announced that the Bui Sugar Limited processing plant would be commissioned in October 2024.
