Agyarko Must Go! – AMERI To Sue Gov’t Over $82 Million Debt

Pressure is mounting on President Nana Akuffo Addo to fire Boakye Agyarko, the Energy Minister over the recent drama surrounding the controversial AMERI power agreement.

Sources assert that it is unpardonable for the sector minister who was the government’s main front man negotiating the contract for and of the state to continue to be in office in view of the turn of events.

While others believe the president must axe Mr. Agyarko, others vehemently opine that the minister himself ought to “jump” before he is “pushed”.

AMERI

The Energy Ministry Mr. Agyarko heads is in the news again over the deal that saw the John Mahama-led administration in 2015 agreeing to rent 300MW of emergency power from AMERI at the peak of the country’s power crisis.

As part of the deal, AMERI was to build the $510 million power plants and operate them for 5 years before transferring it to the government.

Having been approved by parliamentary March 20, 2015, it later emerged that the government had been short-changed by AMERI as they presented an overpriced budget.

The government was reported to have paid in excess of $150 million but state officials of the Mahama government disagreed.

The New Patriotic Party government which assumed office said it would look into the matter, seeing the deal resurfacing in Parliament.

New AMERI

The new deal presented to parliament by Mr. Agyarko would see Ghana and a new company Mytilineous pay off AMERI so Mytilineous will take over management of the plant for some 15 years.

The new company has offered to pay Ameri an amount of $52,160,560.00, with government paying the remaining $39 million to the Dubai based company so they can wash their hands off the deal entirely.

According to the agreement, the price at which government will now buy power will be reduced from 14.5919 cents to 11.7125 cents per kWh which will lead to a savings of $405.067 million.

Government claims the renegotiated deal will save the country a whopping amount of $400 million over the 15-year period.

But the same civil society groups which kicked against the original deal say the new one is even worse.

ACEP insists government cannot purport to extend the deal to 15 years with a miserly reduction in prices of power per kwh when it has only two years more to own the property and can even reduce the prices even further from 11.7125 cents per kWh to 10 cents per kWh.

As though the drama over the deal were over, a letter has popped in which AMERI is seeking to wash its hands off the new deal.

According to AMERI, it was not involved in any discussion with the Energy Ministry on renegotiating or amending the power deal signed with the John Mahama led government in 2015.

The AMERI group suggests permits, permissions and requisite approvals were not gotten from other stakeholders to the existing power deal — the Finance Ministry, Attorney General’s Department Volta River Authority, as well as the Public Utility and Regulatory Committee (PURC) — before the documents for renegotiation, were sent to parliament.

AMERI also served a final notice of default in outstanding payments of $82,660,560 stating that no action has been taken on earlier notices received by the ministry.

The Ministry on the other hand have denied the assertion that AMERI was not consulted in respect of the reviewed contract.

Sack

Amidst the melee, the president is quoted as having stated that he had been misled into believing that the contract was a good deal for the country.

On that Pollster and Editor of the Daily Dispatch Newspaper, Ben Ephson argued that the culprits who misled the president must not be spared.

Speaking on Newsfile over the weakened, the senior journalist while commending the President for acknowledging that he was misled into approving the AMERI power deal said “…he must let heads roll, the appointees who misled him; he must sack them and the influence peddlers who went around lying, he must name and shame them. If he decides not to sack then he himself is part of it.”

Suit

Meanwhile, AMMERI is lacing it boots to drag the government to court over its 82 million dollars indebtedness by the state.

The company in July 31, 2018, a letter addressed to the Minister of Energy, Boakye Agyarko said the government has defaulted in paying for several months.

“Through this letter, we would like to serve you this final notice of default of our outstanding payment of $82,660,560.00, duly acknowledged by you through your memo presented to the Parliament dated 25^th of July 2018. In this respect, several notices have been duly served and received by your ministry, but no remedial action has been taken.”

“We would like to draw your attention that in the event that your ministry does not settle our outstanding payments immediately, we will be left with no option but to draw down on the standby letter of credit (SBLC) to recover part of our outstanding payments and adopt the legal remedy available to us,” the letter signed by CEO of AMERI Energy, Maher Al Alili warned.

By: Jeffrey De-Graft Johnson