Ghana says to spare no efforts to ensure energy sufficiency

The Ghana government will spare no efforts to ensure that the country attains energy sufficiency, Vice-President Kwesi Bekoe Amissah-Arthur has stated.

He said the government would support all investment initiatives in the sector to ensure that the country's economy remained on an upward trajectory.

The vice-president made this pledge when he inspected a 350 mega watts (350mw) combined cycle thermal plant being built by Cenpower, an Independent Power Producer (IPP), at Kpone, near Tema, 38 km east of the capital on Wednesday.

Work on the 900 million-dollar thermal plant project being financed by international Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) with Rand Merchant Bank (RMB) of South Africa acting as the Global Lead Bank commenced last year and is expected to be completed in 2017.

"Government will go the full haul to provide the support the sector needs so that the country doesn't return to the debilitating power crisis that engulfed us in the last couple of years," Amissah-Arthur pledged.

He expressed satisfaction about the progress of work on the project, urging the engineers to work hard to meet the deadline.

When completed, Cenpower plant will provide its own fuel for power production as 250 million dollars of the project fund is reserved as working capital for fuel purchase. This will constitute 20 percent of the country's total thermal generation and 15 percent of total power generation.

"We sank money in a project which is not going to depend on government to supply it with fuel. For that reason, we made provision for about 250 million U.S. dollars to serve ourselves, to make sure that there is fuel all the time," Nana Sam Brew Burtler, Chairman of Cenpower, explained.

He said the 33 months timeline set for the completion of the project was on course as the project was 42 percent complete.