Meralco Consortium led by the Manila Electricity Company of the Philippines has been selected by the Millennium Development Authority (MiDA) to manage the Electricity Company of Ghana ECG, under the Power Compact II agreement.
MiDa said in a statement on Thursday, 19 April that Meralco Consortium is known to have the highest combined technical and financial score, and, has, therefore, been designated as the preferred bidder.
Meralco has a distribution network which covers a third of the Philippines and serves over six million customers.
BXC Company Limited and Meralco Consortium were the two bidders after the CH Group withdrew its bid.
Under the Power Compact, six projects will be implemented to address the root causes of the unavailability and unreliability of power in Ghana.
The project comprises ECG Financial and Operational Turnaround Project, NEDCo Financial and Operational Turnaround Project, Regulatory Strengthening and Capacity Building Project, and Access Project.
The rest are Power Generation Sector Improvement Project and Energy Efficiency, and Demand Side Management Project.
The Government of Ghana signed the Ghana Power Compact with the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), an independent United States government agency, on the sidelines of the US Africa Leaders’ Summit in Washington on 5 August 2014 while Mr John Mahama was president.
The Ghana Power Compact will provide Ghana with a grant sum of US$498,200,000 to improve the performance of Ghana’s power sector, unlock the country’s economic potential, create jobs, and reduce poverty.
About US$350 million of the grant is being invested in ECG to make the country’s power distributor operationally and financially efficient.
The Compact is being implemented by the Government of Ghana through the Millennium Development Authority (MiDA).
At last year’s May Day celebration, President Nana Akufo-Addo said his government intended amending the Private Sector Participation (PSP) agreement of ECG with the MCC so that the Ghanaian government could wield more than the originally negotiated 20 per cent control with the private sector controlling the remainder 80 per cent and a $1billion investment over a 25-year period.
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