President Gnassingbe visits industrial sites in Tema

Accra, Aug. 25, GNA- Togolese President Faure Gnasingbe, at the start of a two-day official visit to Ghana on Tuesday toured the Sunon Asogli Power Plant, at Kpone, near Tema.

He also visited Pioneer Food Cannery in Tema. The Togolese leader, who arrived in Accra, to a rousing welcome held bilateral talks with his Ghanaian host, President John Evans Atta Mills. He was accompanied to the facility by Ghana's Vice President John Dramani Mahama.

President Gnassingbe and Vice President Mahama were led round the site by Togbe Afede IV, Chief Executive Officer of the plant and the Paramount Chief of Asogli, Ho in the Volta Region.

The first phase of the Sunon Asogli Power project, a joint venture between China Africa Development Fund and Shenzhen Energy Group Limited of China, has been completed and is expected to generate more than 200 megawatts of electricity next October. However the absence of gas supply from the West African Gas Pipeline project has made the facility redundant.

The plant is expected to generate a total of 560 megawatts of power when the second phase is completed.

President Mills visited the project site last June and noted that the venture was in line

with Government's objective to double the country's power generation capacity to 5,000 megawatts in the medium-term. He stressed the need for the country to shift to the use of gas for power generation, explaining that it was much cheaper for power production, which would ensure that

Ghanaians have access to affordable electricity. President Mills said the use of gas would boost the country's industrialisation drive. The objective of the company is to become the energy resource hub in the country,

and to complement the efforts of government to end electricity rationing, industrial shut

downs and labour layoffs as a result of inadequate power supply. The West African Gas Pipeline, which was started in 2004, was completed last year to help make lower cost fuel in Nigeria available for power generation in Ghana, Togo and Benin. The project is a1so expected to reduce the cost of electricity supply in the three countries by replacing oil with gas imported from Nigeria. It is a 678- kilometre long pipeline, laid onshore and offshore from the gas reserves in Nigeria's Escravos Region of Niger Delta to Benin, Togo and Ghana. It is the first regional natural gas transmission system in sub-Saharan Africa. President Gnassingbe would also tour the Akosombo Dam, which generates much of Ghana's electricity later during his visit.