The Akufo-Addo-led government has outlined plans to increase the country’s power generation capacity in 2017.
According to the Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, 1,207 megawatts (MW) will be added to the national grid by the close of year.
This was made known on Thursday, March 2, when Ken Ofori-Atta presented government’s 2017 budget statement and economic policy in Parliament.
He lauded efforts by the previous government to increase the capacity in 2016.
“In 2016, significant efforts were made to address some of the challenges in the [power] sector,” he noted.
“These include an increase in the total generation capacity by 880MW.
“In 2017, government will continue to increase the installed generation capacity in the county to meet the growing demands for electricity.”
Mr Ofori-Atta, who was reading the budget for the first time, broke down the projects that will see the targeted generation capacity as 370MW for AKSA, 107MW for GPGC, 350MW for CEN and 400 for ENI, among others.
Ghana’s power generation capacity has increased over the past years but demand is said to be outweighing the capacity.
This is said to be the cause of the erratic power supply, leading to loadshedding in some cases.
Mr Ofori-Atta indicated that the nation’s energy distributing companies – Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) and the Northern Electricity Distribution Company (NEDCo) – will be equipped to upgrade systems to ensure efficient supply to Ghanaians.
Source: 3news.com|Ghana