The Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP) has cast doubt on government's announcement that load shedding has ended.

Director of the Centre Mohammed Amin Adams described the announcement as "unnecessary, ill-informed and lacking technical astuteness.

The Power Ministry on Wednesday afternoon issued a statement signed by the Public Affairs Manager of the Ministry Kweku Sersah-Johnson declaring an end to the power crisis.

The four-year-old power crisis has led to scores of deaths, hundreds of businesses folding up, and a general slowdown in the economy.

Many promises were made by different political appointees, right from the president, ministers of state , to resolve the crisis but none were fulfilled.

On his appointment as Minister of the newly created Power Ministry in February this year, Dr Kwabena Donkor vowed to resign if the power outage persisted after December 31, 2015.

With a day to go for the year to end, the ministry announced an end to the load shedding exercise.

"The Ministry of Power wishes to inform the public that its Load Shedding programme in respect of electricity supply has been brought to an end. 

"The Ministry takes this opportunity to express its profound gratitude and appreciation to the entire citizenry and residents of Ghana for their forbearance and understanding during those difficult times. 

"The Ministry and its Agencies wish to assure the public that it shall continue to pursue policies and programs to consolidate the gains so far made in the generation and transmission of Electricity for the country," the statement from the ministry said.

But ACEP said the announcement was hasty.

Mr Amin Adam told Asempa FM's Ekosii Sen programme the announcement was "technically ill informed and was without any strategic basis."

He said given the conditions prescribed by the Public Utilities and Regulatory Commission which warrants a load shedding regime, the government under the prevailing circumstances cannot be jubilating and announcing an end to load shedding at this time.

Citing one of the conditions which is the breakdown of a generating unit which will induce a reduction in supply, Mr Adam said the government announcement was unacceptable.

He also cited transmission and distribution losses all of which affect the power sector and for which reason the government should not be announcing an end load shedding.

"If you don't have sufficient reserve margins, apart from the problems associated with transmission and distribution, you will have problem associated with generation," he stated.