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The Executive Director of the Africa Centre for Energy Policy, Ben Boakye, says government is propping up Genser to kill state energy companies.<\/p>\n
This comes after IMANI Africa and the Africa Center for Energy Policy (ACEP) alleged that Ghana buys gas for 95.8 million dollars and sells to Genser for 43.5 million dollars accounting for a $1.5 billion financial loss to the state.<\/p>\n
According to Ben Boakye, the underpricing of gas sold to Genser by the government has given the energy company an undue advantage over state energy companies which continue to buy gas at market price.<\/p>\n
He noted that as a result, Genser has managed to capture about 60MW of the energy market from state energy companies.<\/p>\n
Speaking on JoyNews\u2019 Newsfile on Saturday, he said, \u201cGenser is into a competitive market where they are selling power to mines just as VRA is generating and selling to everybody else including the mines. As we speak today, VRA has lost 40MW of the market to Genser because they can\u2019t compete. ECG has also lost 20MW of the market because they can\u2019t compete.\u201d<\/p>\n
He explained that the government subsidizing the price of gas sold to Genser will enable the energy company capture a large portion of the energy market; eventually crippling the state energy company.<\/p>\n
He noted that should the calls for a review of the energy deal with Genser fall on deaf ears, Ghana stands to lose billions in revenue.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd Genser is creeping in and grabbing all the big market because we have given the gas to them essentially for free. So what we are doing and the manner in which we are propping Genser, we don\u2019t fight the entry of the private sector if they can make genuine efforts to take up market without being supported by the state against other entities or other players in the market.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut the way that we are doing it, we are setting them up against the state institutions and they\u2019re going to kill them essentially. Because they\u2019re gradually taking all the big market from them and the state sits there and complains about excess capacity.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean if you have taken 60MW, it means VRA has lost 60MW so whatever the IPVs are generating and they cannot sell to the mines the state has to find money to pay. So those calculations we have not even gone there yet. If we go there to then begin to analyse the full impact of all these subsidies we\u2019ll run into several billions at this point,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n
Ben Boakye added that as Genser expands their operations across the country, state energy enterprises will have little fighting chance to survive.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd gradually they\u2019re building to Kumasi, they intend to build a pipeline all the way to the Eastern Region, Kyebi area to also supply the mines over there and it\u2019s the state that is supplying all these subsidies.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo if you look at all that is happening in the space it appears to me that we\u2019re actually developing a Trojan horse to cannibalise all the state enterprises in the energy sector in the long run and that shouldn\u2019t be patronized by independents like us who are also interested in how the state agencies function even with all of their difficulties.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a responsibility to ensure that we do not add on to the pressures that they\u2019re facing by just doing some of these transactions,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Executive Director of the Africa Centre for Energy Policy, Ben Boakye, says government is propping up Genser to kill state energy companies. This comes after IMANI Africa and the Africa Center for Energy Policy (ACEP) alleged that Ghana buys gas for 95.8 million dollars and sells to Genser for 43.5 million dollars accounting for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1214608,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[7737,7541,26728,807,1252,2635,3267,21659,10092,932,2742,17684],"class_list":["post-1214606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-ben","tag-boakye","tag-cannibalise","tag-deal","tag-developing","tag-energy","tag-enterprises","tag-genser","tag-horse","tag-sector","tag-state","tag-trojan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1214606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1214606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1214606\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1214606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1214606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1214606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}