Local partners in PDS concession agreement lacked experience and financial capabilities – Jinapor
A former Deputy Energy Minister in the erstwhile Mahama government, John Jinapor has said categorically that the local partners in the Power Distribution Service concession agreement between the government of Ghana and Philippino company, Meralco, lacked experience and financial capabilities.
According to him, the Nana Addo-led government gave out shares of the agreement to their friends and cronies
“If a member of the NPP owns a company who has the required financial capabilities and the technical know-how to manage a state assert like ECG, I have no problem with it but what happened was that, they hurriedly established companies to buy shares in the concession agreement ” he said.
He said, parliament unanimously agreed that the local partners were not fit to be part of the concession agreement.
“When they were presented to us in parliament, we all agreed that they were not fit, we looked at their track record and balance sheet, they had no money and we told them, we knew they would disgrace us if we gave them the nod” he said.
In an interview monitored by The Ghana Report, the Mr. Jinapor said, the government had no choice then to cancel the deal.
“The way the government rushed to get people to form the PDS concession agreement was suspicious, we at the minority side tried our best to get the government to see reasons with us but they refused so on the 1st of April I wrote an article and I categorically stated that the insurance guarantee presented by government was fraudulent, eventually the Minister of Energy came out to say, PDS presented to them a fraudulent document.”
BACKGROUND
The Government of Ghana has terminated the Concession Agreement with the Power Distribution Services (PDS) Limited over the take-over of the assets of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) for distribution of electricity in the southern sector of the country.
The move was necessitated by a forensic audit conducted by the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) and Government of Ghana’s investigations into the issuance of Demand Guarantees for the Concession Transaction, which revealed that the Payment Security for the Transaction was invalid.
The investigations re-affirmed the earlier report that, there was no approval by Competent Signatories to the Demand Guarantees issued by Al-Koot in Qatar, therefore, the Transaction lacked the required authorization and approval of the Company.
More so Al-Koot has an underwriting policy and guidelines which required the approval of the Central Bank of Qatar, but no such approval was granted by the Central Bank of Qatar.
In view of that, President Nana Akufo-Addo and Chief Executive Officer of the MCC, Mr Caircross agreed that the existing Concession between PDS and ECG, which involved the transfer of the latter’s assets worth three billion dollars should be discontinued, while a suitable replacement was sought before December 31,2019.