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Mr Joseph Korto, the Presiding Member of the Tema Metropolitan Assembly has hailed the new power deal from the existing deal with AMERI as a master-stroke by President Nana Akufo-Addo.

“In the 15 years that Mytileneous will take over the deal, we are saving $400million while tariffs are going to come down. Let us not forget that Mytileneous is buying part of the existing debt from the original deal with AMERI signed by the NDC, in order to pay off AMERI,” Mr. Korto pointed out.

Mr Korto who was speaking in an exclusive interview with the Ghana News Agency in Accra after a sessional meeting said the savings from the new deal alone was compelling enough reason for Parliament to approve it.

He therefore said Parliament must do well to pass the deal when it returned from recess.
In the new agreement, the country will save a whopping $400 million over a 15-year period, the government has said. Under this agreement, a new company- Mytilineous International Trading Company will take over the management of the Ameri power plants for 15 years.

The new company has offered to pay Ameri an amount of $52,160,560.00, with the government paying the remaining $39 million to the Dubai based company in order to wash their hands off the deal entirely.

But the deal has been criticised by Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) including; the Africa Centre for Energy Policy that thought the new deal was worse off than the one originally signed by the NDC administration.

The think tank did not understand why the government would seek to extend the contract agreement to 15 years from the original five years even if the tariff cost had been slightly reduced in the new deal.

But Mr Joseph Korto disagrees; “government is entering this deal because of the existing debt of over $90million that government does not have at the moment to pay. Remember the deal with AMERI ends in two years’ time and we will have to cough the cash owed the company upon expiration.”

Mr. Korto said the new deal was a masterstroke by President Akufo-Addo who was trying to make the best of a bad deal that the NDC had saddled Ghana with.

“I will urge Ghanaians not to listen to the NDC; they are the reason we are in the current mess in the first place,” Mr. Korto said.