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The sector’s debt profile continues to grow
- Distribution losses, government debt to blame
- Ghana has experienced increased outages
The Minister-designate for Energy, Dr. Mattew Opoku Prempeh, has told the Ghanaian Parliament to ensure steps are taken to fix the nation’s electricity sector. As of January 2019, the sector’s debt was estimated at $2.7 billion and could rise to $12.5 billion by 2023.
“We don’t collect enough revenue to meet our requirements,” Prempeh said. “We’re going to sit down with all the players and let them understand that if we don’t change and agree on some parameters we’ll all collapse,”. Prempeh said this at the confirmation hearing for his appointment as the Minister of Energy. He added that he will consider a new approach to the privatization of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) following the failure of the government to privatise it in 2019.
In 2017, the Government of Ghana set up the Energy Sector Support Levy (ESSL) to raise funding for the sectors debt challenges. Despite the efforts of the government to provide funding for the sector, the ECG is currently unable to collect an estimated 14% of electricity tariffs from its consumers.