NPP Manifesto Watch: Improving power sector

The power sector in Ghana has underperformed its potential, presenting ongoing challenges that exert a downward pressure on our national budget, and pose adverse consequences for the economy.
The current regulatory framework has not fully yielded the desired outcomes. Residential, commercial, and industrial consumers still face issues with the reliability and cost competitiveness of power supply, hindering the country’s economic growth and development efforts.

Initiatives
Under a Bawumia presidency, a number of initiatives will be undertaken:

• Incentivise solar power users through the net metering system under which households and other producers of solar power get “credits” for excess power they provide the national grid, against which they can use grid power when not on solar.
• Implement a significant shift in electricity tariffs structure to a regime in which commercial rates are either equal to, or lower than residential rates, never higher, to power industries and businesses.
• Develop a framework to allocate reliable and affordable power pricing to aid the development of the emerging lithium, and integrated iron, steel, aluminium and manganese industries.
• Introduce a framework to streamline the procurement of fuel for power generation. This framework will encourage Independent Power Producers (IPPs) to buy their own fuel to improve power security and efficiency, transfer financial risk and cost efficiency responsibilities to IPPs, foster market competition, allow the government to focus on core responsibilities, reduce the fiscal burden, enhance transparency and accountability, and attract investments into the sector.
• Introduce measures to accelerate national electrification to achieve a universal access by 2028.
• Introduce private sector participation (PSP) into the retail power sector, to improve efficiency and customer satisfaction, especially in metering, billing, and collection.
• Institute governance requirements similar to those in highly regulated sectors like finance and banking, to ensure board members’ fiduciary responsibilities, and potential sanctions, are clearly spelt out.
• Strengthen regulatory oversight within the power sub- sector, and implement institutional rearrangements, including the merger of Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) and the Energy Commission (EC) to empower the regulatory body and promote consistency in regulatory policies and standards, and digitise the revenue platform that will apply Cash Waterfall Mechanism (CWM) sharing ratio at the point of all electricity tariff payment, to enhance liquidity within the electricity value chain, increase transparency and reduce indebtedness.