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Ghana is better off paying the $170 million judgment debt - Boakye Agyarko

Boakye Darko, a former Minister of Energy, has said that it’s better for the country to pay a judgment debt of $170 million than to continue with the power agreement with independent contractor, Ghana Power Generation Company (GPCC).
Energy Minister Boakye Agyarko, Gov't begins process to amend Ameri deal
Energy Minister Boakye Agyarko, Gov't begins process to amend Ameri deal

He said the country would have lost billions of dollars if the contract was still running.

Speaking in interview on Citi FM in Accra, Mr. Agyarko said the country was already paying huge sums of money for such a ‘needless’ agreement.

He insists that Ghana is “better off” with this judgement debt.

“We have paid almost over $1 billion for excess capacity. The review committee estimated that the contract as they were if they were allowed to stand, the country will be paying at the end of the 13th year $7.2 billion in excess capacity charges. Now if the country is going to be saddled with $7.2 billion for excess capacity, we needed to rethink. In the PPA review, what it said was that if we could get the termination and the management of all the excess capacity, the liability that we will be faced with is about $600 million out of pocket.”

“Now $600 million in year one compared to $7.2 billion, now even if you do the next present value calculation and bring the $7.2 billion into a one-year payment, we are still better off. I don’t understand why the people whose time these excess capacity contracts were signed now have the guts and the audacity to accuse people who are trying to manage the mess they created.”

The power contractor has won a 170 million dollar judgment debt against the Government of Ghana at the London Commercial Court of international arbitration.

The GPCC dragged the government of Ghana to the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) after an official termination in 2018, demanding compensation from the government for a breach of the contract.

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