Other concerns have also been the transparency on the management of the monies collected so far and what it is being used for.
However, the chairperson of the Brong Ahafo and Ashanti regional branch of the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI), Gyamfua Owusu Achaw, has called on government to reduce taxes on energy.
She said the move will alleviate the plight of Ghanaians from the current energy crises the country has been faced with.
According to Achaw, the high cost of electricity is putting so much stress on industries in the Brong Ahafo and Ashanti regions hence the need for government to reduce taxes on energy.
She said they are educating their members on how they could conserve energy in order to break even so that their companies would not collapse which could add up to the already high unemployment rate in the country.
“Government is yet to come out with modalities for the relief, we are grateful to government but we feel government can do more or better to still remove most of the energy taxes,” Achaw stressed.
Meanwhile, the Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP), an independent think-tank, has welcomed government’s move to pay debt owed by the Volta River Authority (VRA) to banks and supplies.
Government has indicated the VRA legacy debts of GHC2.2 billion will be paid from a special account opened to receive the proceeds of the Energy Sector Levy.
It said, VRA is a strategic institution in the country’s power sector, producing about 2,400 megawatts of the total 4,000 capacity power generation. However, the debt burden of the Authority has increased over the past several years due to a combination of operational and financial difficulties.
The indebtedness makes it difficult for the company to pay millions of dollars owed Ghana Gas, the West African Gas Pipeline Company (WAPCo) and the several independent power producers in the country.
Speaking to the media, Head of Policy Unit at ACEP, Dr. Ishmael Ackah, said government’s intervention to settle the VRA debt is a step in the right direction.
“It is good that the government has come in to help; VRA’s debt as at now is about Gh6 billion and paying about Gh2.2billion is quite good,” he said.
Fifty per cent of the funds accruing under the Power Generation and Infrastructure Support sub-account under the Energy Sector Levies Act (ESLA, 2015) will be used to retire the legacy debts.
Dr. Ackah however says transparency in the management of the Energy Sector Levies will inure to the benefit of Ghanaians.
“Energy Sector levies are paid by citizens so we’d want to know how much we’re receiving, so if there could be semi-annual accounts to citizens that this is how much we received from last year, and this is how much we paid and this is the balance, at least it will promote transparency,” he suggested.
Adnan Adams Mohammed
