Brace up to pay more for power in 2017 – Expert

Energy expert Kojo Opoku is predicting that electricity consumers will be paying more for the service in 2017.

According to him, the power distributor needs a lot of funds to deal with its indebtedness, in order to improve supply.

ECG is indebted to a tune of 3.74 billion Ghana cedis. However, some institutions also owed the service provider huge sums of money, which is crippling it.

For instance, government in July this year released some 200 million cedis to defray some of the debts it owes ECG.

Meanwhile, there have been efforts to privatize the ECG to make it more viable. But energy expert Kojo Opoku says the only way out is for the ECG to increase tariffs next year. “All of us will have to end up paying more, because we will not be able to keep up with the generation and ECG has to pay for its debt and other projects,” he emphasized. He added, “we will have to decide on sleeping in darkness or paying more for sustenance.

In conclusion we will have to start using our money to subsidize ECG”.

He has also advised government to adopt pragmatic measures to ensure stable supply of power. “We are at a time where government has to take pragmatic steps in dealing with these issues.

We need to clear pilling debts from non payments of debt and under-recovery, and tackle the issue as it is on the ground. We need to do the reforms now”, he cautioned.