The World Bank’s initial take on Ghana having additional power capacity sources from gas and their recent position on John Dramani Mahama’s Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) baffles Tsatsu Tsikata.
The former Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) says the Bretton Wood Institution did not buy the idea in the late 80s and early 90s when the GNPC foresaw the need for Ghana to complement and supplement its hydro power with the available gas.
He has therefore taken a swipe on the World Bank Country Director’s attribution of Ghana’s energy debts to former President John Dramani Mahama.
Pierre Laporte had indicated that the Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) under the Mahama administration were poorly negotiated and has called for a review of the “wrong and expensive” agreements as he described it.
“In the aspect of Ghana, those contracts you signed with the PPA are too expensive. The kind of PPA you signed, it means Ghana is paying for electricity not in use through the doubling of capacity.
“The fact is, in the last few years, Ghana entered into some PPAs that were wrong. These types, in our view, were at the wrong rate and at the wrong prices and today you’re paying duly for it. And today the country is being billed for many of these wrong PPAs,” he said in a recent media engagement.
But Mr. Tsikata finds the World Bank’s recent interest in the discussion as “interesting.”
“When I look back at this whole gas and power sectors in which this issue is arising, the World Bank has made some serious mistakes in relation to understanding our national energy situation.
“In the 80s and early 90s when GNPC, as a result of this gas mandate, was insisting that based on all the evidence available gas was an important source to complement and supplement the power from hydro sources at that time, the view of the World Bank was against having additional capacity from gas sources, he said on TV3’s Ghana Tonight with Alfred Ocansey Thursday, June 8, 2023.
Mr. Tsikata who is also a private legal practitioner explained that: “The reason I am raising this is because fuel costs are a major part of the problem that we have about the power sector and some of those fuel costs have to do with even going back to the use of light crude oil.”
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