Energy Minister, Dr. Mathew Opoku Prempeh, has described all 40 Power Purchasing Agreements (PPAs) signed under former President John Mahama’s administration amid the power crisis between 2013 and 2016, as desperate and costly.

According to him, these “costly” PPAs subsequently shot up power tariffs by over 200%.

In dealing with this, Dr. Opoku Prempeh told the media three of these PPAs have been deferred under a renegotiated Take and Pay arrangement. This according to him saves Ghana US$1.4 billion dollars each year.

“Some of the things that killed us were PPAs done desperately. We have learnt our lessons, going forward, it can’t be business as usual. There’s a moratorium on any further PPAs. We won’t sign, take or pay business again. Now we have moved on to the second phase to signing new take and pay PPAs. We will only pay for the electricity we use.”

According to him, “the deferment of the three PPAs saved us US$1.4 billion dollars – that in itself can build us 62 stadia worth the size of Tamale. As we speak, there are ongoing negotiations (apart from those deployed) to ensure they reduce their cost to us and possibly move onto new cost charges.”

Meanwhile, the Energy Minister, has assured that the dumsor timetable for parts of Accra that feeds on the Pokuasi Substation will end tomorrow, May 18 as scheduled. 

Even though the minister gave no definitive answer to whether the schedule may be extended or not, he believed the purpose for which the timetable was drawn by the Electricity Company of Ghana has been accomplished.

“There has been a dumsor timetable for those in Accra who are served by the Pokuasi Substation. ECG published a timetable for that and it ends tomorrow. I can’t give you a Yes, No answer because I don’t know what will happen tomorrow but we are assured that for what they needed to know, the reason why they came up with that timetable, it ends tomorrow,” he told the media