Concentrate on exporting extra electricity quickly – Kwabena Donkor to govt

The Former Minister of Power under the Mahama government, Dr. Kwabena Donkor is urging the government to prioritise the exportation of excess electricity to neighbouring countries to help tackle the huge debt crippling the energy sector.

Donkor said the government should focus on aggressively marketing its excess capacity instead of criticizing the Mahama government for the crippling debts due to ill-informed power purchase agreements.

“If you take the export to Burkina, our 330 megawatts fit into their 25 megawatts and that is already in place and that infrastructure is already there and what we now need to do is to aggressively market.”

Mr. Donkor also admonished the government to take advantage of the existing infrastructure to export other countries such Mali other than just Burkina Faso.

“Instead of complaining about the excess capacity, we are unable to meet the demand of Burkina. There is Mali beyond Burkina and there is already interconnection and so there is a need for a policy drive. Right from 2012, the intention was to make Ghana a major exporter of power and we have exported power since the late 1960s and 1970s to Togo and Benin but we want to go beyond that and we want to be a major power exporter.”