American multinational conglomerate, General Electric (GE) is to build a 1000-megawatt (MW) thermal power plant in Ghana.

The plant, which will be pow­ered by gas, will take five years to complete.

However, the first phase of the project is expected to be completed by September 2016 and will add 360MW power to the national grid.

Ghana presently has installed generation capacity of about 2,412 megawatts and dependable genera­tion capacity of 2,125 MW.

Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of GE Ghana, Mr Leslie Nelson was quoted as saying that GE will on Tuesday, May 6, 2014 sign a Memorandum of Under­standing (MoU) with the Ministry of Energy to commence the proj­ect. 

This was contained in a release copied to The Finder.

He said the GE initiative, known as 'Ghana 1000', would con­tribute significantly to addressing the power needs of the country.

He explained that the Ghana 1000 initiative is a pure Independ­ent Power Producer (IPP) initia­tive, requiring no direct financial contribution from the Government of Ghana.

Mr Nelson said government’s role is essentially to create the en­abling environment and a regula­tory framework that would help the project sponsors to add power to the national grid quickly.

He disclosed that GE would also inaugurate a new office in Accra located at Stanbic Heights (Airport City).

The new office, according to the CEO, represents the company’s commitment to growing its busi­ness in Ghana.