Mr. John Kumah, the deputy Finance Minister-designate has revealed that the Energy Sector Levy Act (ESLA) introduced by Seth Terkper the former Finance Minister under the Mahama administration, has been so supportive to the Akufo-Addo- Bawumia government especially in clearing a lot of energy sector-related debts.
Mr. Kumah was speaking on Class91.3FM’s current affairs programme monitored by Apexnewsgh.com.
“In fact”, Dr. Kumah noted, Mr. Terkper, his co-discussant on the show, “was the first person in Ghana to address that problem; that going forward, we cannot handle the debt situation with respect to energy without a special vehicle”.
“But it has helped to raise revenue”, he acknowledged.
The former chief executive officer of the National Entrepreneurship and Innovation Programme (NEIP) said: “In fact, as of June last year, per the data, we had paid GHS12 billion under ESLA alone for trying to clear debt”.
“This year alone, per the data I checked, we had spent almost GHS2 billion and still continuing the energy sector recovery debt and right now, a number of legacy debts – you remember back in 2017, we used to have TOR debt, BOST debt, GNPC debt, VRA debt, ECG debt and even BDCs; last year, the BDCs made an announcement that all their debts had been cleared”, “It is all as a result of this ESLA levy that was introduced”, he noted, adding: “It is true; it is helping and the government of Ghana, I think in 2017, the government also introduced a new vehicle based on this ESLA called ESLA PLC, which raised about GHS10 billion in bonds to be able to help address this take-or-pay contract and I’m happy Hon Seth Terkper said that even they, while they were in office, thought that the take-or-pay was a bad arrangement, so, they had to replace it”.
“So, we must all understand that there’s a problem which has been created and we are all working to resolve it”, He stressed
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