Bawumia On Karpower Barge Deal: “This Really Does Not Make Sense”

Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, running mate to the opposition New Patriotic Party’s 2016 Presidential Candidate, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, says it “really does not make sense” for government to go in for the Karpower Barge deal when the country could have built its own plant.

The 225 megawatts Karpower plant docked at the Tema Port over the weekend and it is expected that it will reduce the current power crisis the country is going through.

However, according to Dr Bawumia, it was a wrong move on the part of the ruling government to go in for a 225 mw plant like the Karpower which “will cost some $225 million…” only to return it after ten years.

Addressing journalists at the party’s Headquarters in Accra, Dr Bawumia said: “after promising to resign if dumsor is not over by the end of the year (2015) the Minister of Power now says he was talking about load shedding and not dumsor. We are still trying to understand what he means. The fact remains that four years down the road, dumsor is still present and the government has just announced the arrival of an emergency solution for ten years by contracting a power barge from Turkey with a reported $100 million guarantee for fuel at the same time as VRA has shut down its plants because it cannot purchase fuel. A 225 mw plant like the Karpower plant will cost some $225 million and we will own it – with the unit cost of a megawatt plant at $1million…

Under the Karpower deal, we will pay for the power from the barge for the next ten years whether we use it or not. ACEP estimates that based on the capacity charge alone which is 5.6cents per kWh, it will cost Ghana some $1 billion for 10 years. This however excludes the fuel cost of a requirement of 35000 tonnes per month. After 10 years the barge will sail away; when we could have built a 1,000 megawatt plant for ourselves. Power from the barge would also cost at least twice that supplied currently from Takoradi. This really does not make sense…”