A committee constituted by President Akufo-Addo, has succeeded in securing a 13 percentage points reduction in the contract sum of the controversial Ameri power plant deal struck under the previous government.
This was disclosed by Deputy Minister-designate for Energy, Dr. Mohammed Amin Adam, during his vetting by the Appointments Committee of Parliament on Thursday.
According to him, the renegotiated deal is in the best interest of Ghanaians.
“I only got involved in the Ameri deal when the President, [Nana Akufo-Addo], asked the then Energy Minister [John Peter Amewu] to renegotiate the agreement, and he added me to the team. So we were able to renegotiate a better deal for Ghana because of what was initially brought to Parliament. We were able to reduce the cost by 13% and also improved on the payment terms,” he stated.
“We were supposed to pay some $90 million to them at a go, but we managed to spread it over a period, and in addition to that, we managed to exempt the payment from interest accumulation and further got a discount,” he added.
The previous NDC administration in 2015 signed a contract with Ameri to rent 300 megawatts of emergency power generators from AMERI at the peak of the country’s power crisis.
The power agreement with the UAE-based Ameri Energy cost the State $510 million.
But according to the NPP government, it found that the country had been short-changed by Ameri as they presented an overpriced budget, and were overpaid by $150 million.
President Akufo-Addo on assuming office in 2017, commenced renegotiation of the $510 million contract sum.
