The Chamber of Petroleum Consumers (COPEC) has asked the government to call to order some of its officials allegedly craving for the cancellation of the PDS concession agreement for their own interest.
According to COPEC, the Akufo-Addo government must come clear with a proper working plan for ECG or forfeit its decision to terminate the agreement.
The Executive Director of COPEC, Duncan Amoah, who spoke to Citi News said: “What we are also getting from deep throat sources suggest that there is an interest from the Finance Ministry which had also tried at some point to re-negotiate even the shareholding position of the various parties within the agreement. And when the parties rejected the renegotiation of their shareholding agreement, it looked as though some people have taken a position to kick PDS out of this whole agreement,” said Duncan Amoah.
In a separate statement, COPEC indicated that it has become imperative for the government to at this point call to order some of its officials who have vowed to cancel this Agreement with the view of re-allocating same to their supposed favourites “hiding behind a proposed restrictive tendering process.”
“The issue of a vested group and personal interests is becoming more pronounced by the day following from the latest MCC declassified notice to the Government of Ghana. The key principal actors over the past few days have taken very dangerously entrenched positions regarding the earlier stated breaches, infractions or otherwise in the agreement.”
COPEC thus re-echoed its stance that plans to privatize the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) is needless.
“We reiterate our earlier position and support for a complete halting and withdrawal of any transfer of ECG to private operators in the name of concessionaire agreement if and only if the government is ready to accept to allow ECG work completely independent of any political controls.”
COPEC’s key question According to COPEC, an outright termination of a 4-year process citing a botched insurance guarantee forthrightly raises a couple of serious questions of:
Read full statement below
CHAMBER OF PETROLEUM CONSUMERS-GHANA
ACCRA
23/10/19
UNVEILING THE PDS SAGA
THE APPARENT WANTON GREED AND NAKED SHOW OF POWER MUST CEASE IN THE ABSENCE OF A PLAN B.
The unfolding drama and developments surrounding the Millennium Compact Challenge Concessionaire Agreement involving the MCC, Government of Ghana and the Power Distribution Company ( PDS ) is becoming by far the biggest case of reprobation and approbation of state resource in an apparent show of needless naked power for the control of this national asset.
As tensions continues to escalate between the major parties in the concessionaire agreement regarding such issues as insurance guarantees, whether or not there is fraud, whether or not the local partners have the capacity required, string of legal issues, accusations and counter accusations; one thing however continues to remain glaring and incontrovertible.
The issue of vested group and personal interests is becoming more pronounced by the day following from the latest MCC declassified notice to the Government of Ghana.
The key principal actors over the past few days have taken very dangerously entrenched positions regarding the earlier stated breaches, infractions or otherwise in the agreement.
The MCC seem very clear in its posturing, it will have nothing to do with the concession agreement if government does not reinstate PDS by the 30th of October 2019, to all such agreements as contained in the broader concessionaire agreement.
The MCC is clear in its position that its forensic audits by FTI of the whole agreement and subsequent transactions thereon indicates no wrong doing and as such, absolving PDS of any fundamental material breaches as far as the concessionaire agreement is concerned and that the said insurance guarantee by Al-koot even if wrong or bad can be rectified without necessarily terminating the entire 4 year process this far,
The recent public posturing of MCC also suggest some attempted arm twisting by certain powerful persons within Government to re-appropriate shares in the concession to other favourites of these powerful persons.
This move is said to have seen some of the local partners within the PDS agreement drop from some 18% shareholding as spelt out in the current agreement to just 2%, a move which has been resisted by the local partners and for which these so called very powerful persons within government have vowed to terminate at all cost the PDS concession in order to now hand pick these cronies to take over instead of the current partners.
While government indeed reserves all rights to enter into such concessionaire agreements and to abrogate same when fundamental breaches are detected, this right by government should not and must be exercised arbitrarily with the view to favouring any cronies if the information we are picking is anything to go by.
An outright termination of a 4 year process citing a botched insurance guarantee forth rightly raises a couple of serious questions.
(1) does the country and for that matter ECG really need this concessionaire agreement at all cost?
(2) are there any real dangers to the country and for that matter ECG in the event of a complete cancellation of this compact as is increasing becoming evident we are heading for a point of no return and must have a plan B in place by now.
(3) is it true the local partners are being forced to cede some shareholding in the agreement to other persons believed to cronies of some powerful persons within government and who is forcing this renegotiation of shares in an already signed compact agreement?
( 4 ) does the local partners necessarily need to invest fresh capital into the operations of ECG or ECG if managed properly without the usual political interferences is capable of generating enough for reinvestment onto greater efficiency a situation that now makes these so called powerful persons believe they should introduce new shareholders or partners to an already signed deal.
(5) did the supervising local agencies particularly MIDA secure the neccesary authorisations to waive all such critical things as captured in the conditions precedent and what remedial strategy was put in place to forestall a complete breakdown of the concession if any of these conditions later comes back to bite?
(6) will the said agreement indeed suffer any real collateral implementation challenges if the said insurance guarantee is rectified and subsequent scrutiny of all such demands as contained in the agreement?
(7) did the agencies so concerned genuinely agreed this concession because it believed it was the best way out to propelling ECG to greater efficiency within a time frame or simply a case of maximizing returns of selected local partners?
(8) will the state and state actors be prepared to further into the operations of ECG whiles granting its management, a fully autonomous status such that it can front ally override any neddless politicking associated with such state owned entities?
(9) will the state be prepared to pass a new set of legislative instruments to detach ECG from the control of all such political powers in order to independently bill, connect and disconnect even government facilities as the private concessionaire partners were granted?
(10) Can ECG in the absence of the concessionaire arrangement be provided a performance road map to operate purely as a going concern with key performance variables without any further political interventions should the entire concessionaire agreement be cancelled and the compact called-in by the Americans?
we reiterate our earlier position and support for a complete halting and withdrawal of any transfer of ECG to private operators in the name of concessionaire agreement if and only if the government is ready to accept to allow ECG work completely independent of any political controls.
In the absence of the above however, it becomes imperative for government to at this point call some of it’s strong men who have vowed to cancel this Agreement with the view to re-allocating same to their supposed favourites hidding behind a proposed restrictive tendering process.
Signed.
Duncan Amoah
Executive Secretary.
Source: Ghana/otecfmghana.com/Louis Gyamerah
