A former Minister of Power, Dr Kwabena Donkor, has maintained that the emergency power agreement signed with Ghana Power Generation Company (GPGC) went to Cabinet and Parliament for approval.
“The agreement met all the constitutional and legal requirements hence the $170million judgment awarded against the government for the termination,” he stressed.
Dr Donkor, who is the Member of Parliament (MP) for Pru East in the Bono East Region, pointed out that the award was given for wrongful termination and not for wrongful signing.
Reacting to his comments by Godfred Dame, Attorney General and Minister of Justice, that the decision by the signatories to sign such an agreement was uninformed, he expressed surprise and raised concerns Mr Dame did not deem it fit to confirm whoever terminated the agreement would also be referred to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service.
However, Dr Donkor stressed that “the Agreement was sent to cabinet, it had cabinet approval, Secretary to Cabinet wrote to Parliament on July 3, 2015, Parliament approved the agreement and it went through constitutional and legal processes set out for agreements.
“The agreement had the lowest tariffs of all the emergency power purchasing agreements, it had shortest duration, four years and the agreement did not require any financial security from the state and it was one of the agreements negotiated,” he admitted.
Godfred Dame had stated that in relation to the judgment debt, the fundamental question asked was why the agreement was entered into in the first place and why did John Jinapor, a former Minister of Energy and his former boss execute the signatory of agreement and afterwards set up a committee to review it.
He indicated that It was because Mr Jinapor and his boss had realised it would result in excess capacity and cost was monumental and insisted that per the report of PPA Committee, ‘if all agreements signed by Mr Jinapor and his former boss had been allowed, each year, the nation would be exposed to payment of $586 million.
Mr Dame noted that cumulatively, between 2013 and 2018 the nation would pay $1.76 billion.-3news.com