No more IPPs without competitive bidding – Nana Addo

• Posted on September 17, 2018
• by Ellsamwise King
• Comment

President Nana Akufo-Addo has directed the Energy Ministry and the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) not to sign any Independent Power Producer (IPP) agreements without a competitive bidding process.

Speaking at the commissioning of a 20-megawatt solar plant at Gomoa Onyaadze in the Central Region, President Akufo-Addo said the era where IPPs short-changed Ghanaians have ended.

He says the government has begun rationalising the contributions of IPPs in the country.

“When we came into office, we inherited a plethora of IPP agreements, all of whom were contracted at the time of our crisis, and therefore, left us in a weak position, and got us accepting tariff rates of 18 cents per kilowatt hour and over. In an Era in the world where 10 cents per kilowatt hour is the maximum, we are producing IPP agreements at 18 cents per kilowatt hour,” he said.

The President stressed that those were “not acceptable arrangements.”

“So, in future, we are going to insist that IPP arrangements are created out of competitive bidding, because it is only by that process that we will be able to get the competitive rates that both our domestic consumers as well as our industrial users need and can work with.

President Akufo-Addo also hopes Ghana starts producing its own solar panels.

“And then, we are in an age where renewable energy facilities are being produced domestically. So, we want to get to a situation here in Ghana whereby these solar panels are produced domestically. And it can be done within the confines of the one district one factory initiative,” he added.

With the Government having committed itself to having 10 percent of its energy generation mix coming from renewable energy by 2020, the President indicated that his administration has put in place measures “that will help us, within a decade, to have renewable energy as the majority of the generation mix of our country.”