Vice-President John Dramani Mahama (right) addressing the Millenium Challenge Account Ghana Program compact II at a ceremony in Accra. Those with him are Prof. Samuel Sefa-Dedeh (2nd left) and Mr Jonathan Bloom (left), Vice-President of the Millenium Chanllege corperation.
Story: Musah Yahaya Jafaru & Mary Ankrah
The Vice-President, Mr John Dramani Mahama, has stated that Ghana will increase power generation to ensure reliable power supply and become a net exporter of power in the West African sub-region by 2015.
He said Ghana had comparative advantage over its neighbouring countries and indicated that the country would explore other sources of energy, such as solar and biomass, to increase power generation.
Mr Mahama was speaking at a summit on the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) Compact Two in Accra Tuesday.
The summit, attended by regulators, operators and consumers, was on the theme, “Powering Ghana for Accelerated Development”.
The MCA Compact Two is to fund power generation and transmission to ensure reliable power supply in the country.
The summit was to provide a forum for the participants to make inputs into the concept paper for the MCA II.
The Vice-President noted that power was critical to the development of the country because of its support for the industrial and the agricultural sectors.
He said the country’s energy demand was increasing, a situation which required adequate funding to improve infrastructure, and, therefore, thanked the US government for deciding to support Ghana under the MCA II and indicated that the expected increased power generation would create wealth and reduce poverty.
Mr Mahama said the government had already begun power sector reforms with the establishment of infrastructure to increase power generation.
“Investing in power, making it reliable and improving access are the ways to go,” he stressed.
He expressed the hope that MCA II’s support would improve the transmission system and regulation and promote private sector participation in the power sector.
He said there was the need for the projects under the MCA II to consider local content and technology transfer and warned against giving contracts to lower bidders, since it created unfairness and affected the proper execution of projects.
A Deputy Minister of Energy, Alhaji Inusah Fuseini, said Ghana continued to explore ways of making energy a fundamental right of all citizens and indicated that the main strategy of the energy policy was to increase the installed generation capacity from approximately 2,000 megawatts to 5,000 megawatts.
He said Ghana required $1.7 billion to meet its quest for universal access and indicated that the government had received $966.55 million from bilateral and multilateral institutions in that regard.
Alhaji Fuseini said there was a shortfall of $729 million, for which reason support from the MCA Compact II would be helpful.
The National Co-ordinator of the MCA II, Prof Samuel Sefa-Dedeh, said his outfit wanted to incorporate the views of stakeholders to put Ghana in a better position to access the MCA II.
The Vice-President of the MCC, Mr Jonathan Bloom, gave the assurance that the MCC would collaborate with Ghana to improve power generation and supply in the country.
No comments:
Post a Comment