“$500m ECG Concession Money Already Being Disbursed” – Donkor

Former Power Minister Dr. Kwabena Donkor has disclosed that disbursement of the $500million ECG privatization package under the Power Compact II agreement has already begun.

This is before the Millennium Development Authority (MiDA) finalizes the paper work related to the implementation of the Compact II agreement with Meralco Consortium.

MiDA last month selected Meralco Consortium which is led by the Manila Electricity Company (Meralco) to manage ECG after determining it to “have the highest combined technical and financial score.”

The announcement followed the disqualification of BXC Consortium.

Per the compact, the Millennium Challenge Corporation is expected to inject about $418 million into ECG, while Meralco will invest about $500 million.

“A little bit of the compact money has been disbursed already in financially engineering the processes,” revealed the former Power Minister Dr. Kwabena Donkor in an exclusive interview with Starr news’ Ibrahim Alhassan. “But, there’s a bulk of it.”

He went on to state that he is not in support of the compact “so structured” even as a Minister.

“I have never believed in a single concession,” he posited, adding “under the power sector restructuring programme that we initiated as far back as 1995 ECG was to be broken up into a special business units/operating companies so  that they can do some internal competition [where] best practices can be learnt, [but] unfortunately we have a single concession.”

In a related development, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has stated that no worker of the Electricity Company of Ghana will be sacked due to the ECG concession agreement.

Addressing workers at the Baba Yara Sports Stadium in Kumasi in the Ashanti region on Tuesday, May 1, the president who was commenting on the ECG concession agreement for the first time since a bidder was selected assured workers of ECG that none of them will be negatively affected.

“No worker of the ECG will be negatively affected or laid off due to the ECG concession,” the president said.

Source: Starrfmonline