Create free energy market - IMANI

IMANI Ghana, a policy think tank, has called for the creation of a free energy market to put to rest the country’s energy problems.

According to the organisation, the creation of a free energy market would further facilitate an increase in the capacity, supply, reliability and price of the commodity.

In a report, IMANI Ghana said “the discussion has stayed too long on how to provide subsidised power for domestic use,” adding that Ghana must move faster towards the creation of a regulated but free energy market.

It continued by emphasizing that there must be faster movement towards enabling independent power producers to directly distribute to end users, instead of selling their output to ECG, which was perceived to be incurably inefficient.

The policy think tank said the major problem lay more with power generation by VRA, than distribution by ECG, explaining that power which is unavailable cannot be distributed. Maintaining that such problems could be addressed, it said it could also be done with appropriate management strengthening and corporate cultural change.

It said power problems had worsened in recent times, adding that authorities seemed to discriminate against industrialists in favour of domestic consumers in price and allocation of power.

This, it believed, was wrong and made doing business in the country even more unattractive. IMANI Ghana released the report after holding a dialogue with industrialists in Accra as part of its outreach and engagement with the builders of Ghana’s economy.

Thirty-five (35) top executives from manufacturing, retail, financial services, legal institutions, agriculture, telecoms and technology took part in the meeting.