Energy Analyst Dr. Yussif Sulemana believes that President-elect John Dramani Mahama’s commitment to incorporating private sector involvement in the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) is crucial for improving efficiency in the power distribution sector.
However, he emphasized that the success of this initiative depends on the incoming administration’s strong determination and unwavering commitment.
Dr. Sulemana also advocates for maintaining the momentum of digitization and the cashless system while integrating private sector partners into revenue collection alongside ECG.
” I believe that it’s highly feasible just that it takes strong political will power to be able to do that and following the promise made by the president-elect to do that and his other full up interviews after winning, that he’s gonna stay course in doing that. I think that’s commendable. If you look at ECG or the distribution arm of the power sector, it carries the entire power sector because that the cash flow conduits that supplies require revenue to be able to keep up the transmission and then the generation. If you look at power structure adjustment that was proposed by World Bank sometime past when they recommended the generation aspect to be privatized and as well as the distribution aspect. And when we did that for the generation, we saw the results,”
There was also quite clear. We had a huge amount of power coming to the pool and at least we’re not having erratic power supply then and until we went to sleep and then we came back to some semblance of generation issues but fast forward, the decisioning aspect has been the revenue sink in a way because if a power is handed to that chain and then the recovery rate and leave much we desire, then it’s going to pull down the other aspects and that has been what has been happening. Yes, some digitalization and cashless system have been implemented. We have to make it robust and stay on course on that. We would have to involve a private sector participant, not entirely ECG but I believe at the revenue collection arm of it.
That’s the bane of the whole thing and what the government need to do is just to get a serious business minded selfless private sector player. It should be business minded but the mission Ghana should not be short chain of assault. “
