Piac, Ghana gas disagree over VRA debt
There is confusion over how much the Volta River Authority owes the Ghana National Gas Company (GNGC) Limited.
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While the Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC) maintains that VRA’s debt to the national gas company was US$434.7 million as at the December 2016, Ghana Gas says the power generator owes it US$ 534.22 million.
The confusion arose after the release of PIAC’s 2016 report, detailing revenue inflows and outflows in state institutions operating in the petroleum sector.
In the report, PIAC said VRA’s indebtedness to GNGC was US$434.7 million on December 2016.
The amount is the monetary value of gas that VRA took from GNGC but was yet to pay.
However, following extensive media reports on the matter, the GNGC issued a statement on June 22 that insinuated that PIAC was understating the debt.
The statement was signed by the company’s Corporate Communications Manager, Ernest Kofi Owusu Bempa.
But moments after the Ghana Gas release, PIAC, public group working to promote transparency in revenue collection and utilisation in the petroleum sector, issued a counter statement to explain that the GNGC statement failed to take cognisance of the fact that the period covered by the committee’s report was from January to December 2016.
For this, the committee’s Chairman, Dr Joseph Winful, said in the statement that the debt amounted to US$434.70 million and not the US$ 534.22 million that the company was alluding to.
The GNGC release on June 19 said that the VRA stated that its inability to settle its debt to GNGC was as a result of Electricity Company's failure to pay huge debts owed VRA, while ECG blamed its failure to settle debts to VRA on its consumers.
However, VRA stated that the government was working assiduously to resolve these cyclical debt issues to make the sector more financially solvent.
As a way of resolving these debt issues, the government is creating a holding fund for all receivables in the power generation sector. GB
