After PDS Fraud, Gov’t Cooks Up Another Scheme To Capture ECG

An unrelenting Akufo Addo administration has kicked off another attempt to once more hand over the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) to a supposed private concessionaire for management, despite the fresh memories of the massive US$ 500 million PDS scandal.

The Deputy Minister of Energy in charge of petroleum, Dr Mohammed Amin Adam gave hints of the government’s new move to privatise ECG.

State-owned Daily Graphic reported today, November 10, 2020, that the Deputy Minister said although the government appeared to be silent on the matter after its lackeys, appointees and family and friends of President Akufo Addo fraudulently fronted for the earlier takeover attempt of ECG through the scandalous Power Distribution Services (PDS) last year. 

The Deputy Minister repeated the usual line, saying the privatisation will make ECG more efficient and profitable to support economic development.

Yet, given the track-record of the Akufo Addo administration in all the major transactions to privatise state resources, there is no guarantee that the country will not experience a repeat of PDS with the usual culprits of the President’s cousin, Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko and Nephew Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta, not sticking their hands in the pie again, using surrogates as reportedly happened in the PDS deal.

The PDS deal fell through late 2019 when it was exposed for presenting fraudulent insurance security of almost US$500 million to take over the management of ECG.

On October 23, 2019, ECG took back the operation of the state electricity company. However, the whereabouts of revenues from electricity bills collected by PDS since March 1, 2019, has remained a huge mystery that civil society organisations and the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) hope to unravel.

The management of ECG was on March 1, 2019, taken over PDS following a US$ 500 million Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) power compact agreement with the government of Ghana.

The arrangement required the private companies comprising Filipino Meralco Energy and a consortium of three indigenous Ghanaian companies were to inject management efficiency into the badly performing ECG.

The compact required PDS to raise an additional US$ 490 million. However, even though PDS was given preferential treatment to allow it to secure the funds, it turned out that the payment guarantee secured as their part of the deal was acquired fraudulently.

With the rapid exposé, the Akufo Addo administration was forced to suspend the contract of PDS in July 2019. On October 18, 2019, the government officially announced the termination of its power concession agreement with PDS in a statement issued by Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta.

The PDS deal followed in the same pattern as several other scandalous transactions by the Akufo Addo administration, like the Agyapa mineral royalties deal, the Ameri Power deal, the Aker Energy crude oil deal, the ExxonMobil crude oil deal, among several others.

Many of these scandals have had fingers pointing at the usual names of Ken Ofori-Atta and Gabby Asare Otchere Darko.