President John Mahama is engaged in a deal that will essentially mortgage volumes of Ghana's gas supply to China in return for a US$2billion loan, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) has said.
“The NDC is busily entering into a deal with the Chinese that will mortgage all our gas supply away over the next nineteen years,” NPP Policy Advisor Boakye Agyarko said at a press conference on Wednesday, 26 October at the party’s headquarters in Accra.
Mr Agyarko indicated that such a deal must not be allowed to come to fruition because “it will be the longest suicide note ever signed by any government elected to protect and promote the national interest of any sovereign state”.
Mr Agyarko said agreements of the sort make Mr Mahama “a danger to Ghana’s economy and an NPP government is needed to save the situation from graduating from a crisis to a catastrophe”.
According to him, government has spent unwisely because all the expenditure in the sector during the load shedding period should have been able to permanently resolve the challenges in the sector.
He explained that an Akufo-Addo-led NPP government will “shred into irretrievable pieces, John Dramani Mahama’s reckless technical note to export all our gas in return for US$2billion from China”.
According to him, Mr Akufo-Addo will utilise the good will Ghana expects to have with the government of President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria “to negotiate with WAPCO, the resumption of gas supply as the NDC has failed to do for over two years now”.
In his view, “Nigerians have lost trust in President Mahama and his Ministers,” adding that Ghanaians should not expect any different positive results if Mr Mahama is re-elected.
Mr Agyarko said the NPP will improve power generation through renewable sources to ensure that long term energy supply is guaranteed.
The party said it hopes to introduce a 10-year power plan to provide timely and least-cost investments to have adequate generation, transmission and distribution capacity to meet medium to long term needs.
“The plan will expand, upgrade and modernise the electricity infrastructure as well as major rehabilitation and equipment upgrade projects,” he added.
The party also hopes to implement transmission laws and improve the operations of power sector entities, especially in the distribution sector.
Mr Agyarko was of the view that procurement methods adopted by government was “inefficient and costly and poses a disincentive for the use of electricity for industrial, commercial and social purposes”.
He added that the development of medium to small-scale hydro plants will also be pursued.
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