Business News of Friday, 21 July 2017
Source: citifmonline.com
2017-07-21
K. T Hammond
An urgent motion has been filed in Parliament to have the house rescind the controversial AMERI power deal it passed in 2015.
The motion, according to Citi News sources has been filed by the Adansi Asokwa Member of Parliament, K. T Hammond, who was the ranking member of the Energy Committee at the time the deal was brought before the house.
It would be recalled that the K. T Hammond was the NPP MP who supported the motion when it was moved on the floor.
Excerpts of the motion sighted by Citi News indicates the legislator’s conviction that the deal was suspicious based on some fresh information available to him.
The motion has been approved by the leadership of the House but is yet to be programmed.
The John Mahama-led administration in 2015 agreed to rent the 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 power plants and operate them for 5 years before transferring it to the government.
The cost of the deal was $510m and received parliamentary approval on 20th March, 2015.
The approval of the deal was met with several oppositions but eventually received endorsement by the legislative body.
It later emerged that the government had been shortchanged by AMERI as they presented an overpriced budget.
The reports said the government had paid an excess of $150m but state officials of the Mahama government disagreed.
The New Patriotic Party government which assumed office said it would look into the matter.
The Energy Minister, Boakye Agyarko later constituted a committee led by lawyer Philip Addison to investigate the matter that that ended in controversy as it emerged that the committee had seemingly entangled itself in a conflict of interest position by accepting sponsorship from AMERI to travel and stay in Dubai for some days as it investigates them [AMERI].
