340 megawatts power project to be sited at Kpone
A US$400-MILLION independent power plant is to be constructed at Kpone in the Greater Accra Region to generate an additional 340 megawatts of power into the national electricity grid.
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The project, which has already received the needed funds will include a fuel storage facility that will have the capacity to preserve fuel for three months.
It is expected to commence in June, this year.
Delegation
A delegation from Sumitomo Corporation, the project sponsor, led by Mr Samuel N. Brew-Buttler, the Chairman of Cen Power Holdings, the local partner of the corporation, called on the Vice-President, Mr Kwesi Amissah-Arthur, at the Flagstaff House Wednesday to update him on the status of the project.
The Senior Managing Executive Officer of Sumitomo Corporation, Mr Kanegae Michihiko, who set the tone for the meeting, told the Vice-President that Ghana was the centre of the corporation’s operations in West Africa and expressed his outfit’s willingness to double the electricity generation capacity in the sub-region.
Describing Ghana as the corporation’s ideal investment destination, given its political stability and good investment environment, Mr Michihiko said another purpose of the visit was to ascertain the government’s commitment to the development of the project.
Sumitomo Corporation is a Japanese multinational organisation engaged in a wide range of businesses, including construction, infrastructure development, automobile and investments, in more than 65 countries.
Vice-President
Mr Amissah-Arthur stated that the government would continue to encourage companies to take advantage of the investment climate in the country to invest in productive areas of the economy.
He remarked that the government, in the spirit of encouraging more investors, was working hard to create economic stability to attract more organisations to invest in the energy sector, in view of the high demand for energy.
He assured investors that the measures put in place by the Central Bank were not to frustrate investors but rather to halt the “dollarisation” of the economy.
The Vice-President indicated that the Ministry of Energy had instituted a medium-term plan designed to increase the country’s energy capacity by 2016 and expressed the hope that the decision by Sumitomo Corporation to build a power plant would encourage more independent power producers to follow suit.
Deputy Minister
A Deputy Minister of Energy and Petroleum, Mr John Jinapor, expressed the government’s commitment to achieve the targeted 5,000 megawatts of power by 2016 and stressed that energy supply continued to increase from year to year, recording a 12 per cent increase in 2013, with the expectation to record 15 per cent this year.
Mr Brew-Buttler told journalists that the Africa Finance Corporation, Sumitomo Corporation, African Infrastructural and Investment Managers and Cen Power Holdings had financial stakes in the project.
He said the project was the largest private sector developed power plant and that it would be formally handed over to the government after 20 years.
The plant would primarily be ran on liquified natural gas alongside light crude oil and diesel.