The Coalition of Stakeholders on Electricity Contracts and Arrangements (COSECA), a civil society organisation, has called on the government to support the Electrical Company of Ghana (ECG) to address some critical issues confronting the power distribution company.
It observed that although ECG had increased revenue through the implementation of digitisation and the Loss Reduction Project, it had not translated entirely into addressing the issues of customer metering, boundary and distribution metering, and other customer service performance metrics.
The group, therefore, suggested to the government to consider “repackaging ECG for enhanced performance, through internal restructuring in the first instance, and before considering any other forms of external participation in the retail distribution sector.”
CONSECA conveyed this in a statement signed by its Executives, Dr. Steve Manteaw, Kofi Bnetil, Kwame Jantuah, Nana Yaa Jantuah and Kofi Kapito.
Generation mix
It also observed that the abundance of rains, which had enabled the optimal generation from the hydro sources, had not benefited the citizenry because the generation mix had not been improved “with an increased hydro component that potentially can reduce the tariff to the benefit of Ghanaians.”
“COSECA strongly believes that the generation mix has to be rationalized to ensure that the benefit of increased hydro generation is passed on to Ghanaians and not the export market. This situation needs to be rectified using the automatic adjustment mechanism to redistribute over and under recoveries to the benefit of Ghanaians,” it added.
The group also cited the lack of a level playing field in the wholesale market among key players in the generation and transmission sector.
“COSECA believes immediate action must be taken to address these issues to ensure a level playing field for all market participants; and that the generation and transmission sector players stay within the jurisdiction and the confines of the law without straying into the distribution grid to supply directly to bulk customers without addressing the related issues of stranded assets and cross subsidisation,” it pointed out.
In addition, COSECA observed that only ECG contributes to the provision of the reserve margin, which is the 18 % target required for maintaining the reliability of the transmission grid.
“The cost associated with this reserve margin capacity requirements is substantially borne to customers of ECG, with no payments made by the other bulk customers supplied by VRA [Volta River Authority] and other loading serving entities in the deregulated market as their load share allocation,” it said.
“Meanwhile, the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) has also not made any compensatory payments in tariff to cover the cost of these associated ancillary services in the tariff review,” it added
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