Blame Finance Ministry For 'Botched' Concession Deal– Kwabena Donkor

A former Power Minister, Kwabena Donkor is blaming the Finance Ministry for the bad concession deal it entered with Power Distribution Services’ (PDS).

According to him, the Ministry played a leading role in the signing of the agreement with the sector minister being the one who appended his signature to finalize the deal.

Speaking on Citi TV’s The Point of View, Kwabena Donkor said the Energy Ministry is also culpable for the ensuing debacle.

“The first person that we have to hold responsible for this debacle is the Minister of Finance, the compact was signed by the Minister of Finance not the Minister of Energy. The Minister of Energy has sectoral oversight over ECG and others. MiDA falls under the office of the President.”

He also said the Attorney General’s Office, the principal legal advisor to government, also failed to do due diligence before allowing the deal to go through.

“Those who are culpable are, the Finance Minister who signed the whole compact, not necessarily this Finance Minister, the Energy Minister [his office] and then the Attorney General. The Attorney General is the government’s chief legal advisor,” he stressed.

The government on Tuesday decided to suspend a concessionary agreement with PDS for distribution of power in Ghana, with immediate effect following what it said was the discovery “of fundamental and material breaches of PDS' obligation in the provision of Payment Securities (Demand Guarantees).

Details of the alleged breach revealed that the guarantee presented by PDS was fraudulently procured.

The Minister for Information said government’s due diligence led to the discovery of the breach and that further investigations were being carried out to determine the final action on the matter.

But Kwabena Donkor dispelled the claims that the discovery of the breach was due to government’s diligence.

He said government rather acted sluggishly upon a tip-off earlier in July when their attention was drawn to the possible breach.

“We [Ghana] did not discover this as a result of any due diligence. We were given a tip off on the 16th of July that these documents that have been produced as bank guarantee was fictitious and that the gentleman who is purported to have signed it, did not have the capacity to sign.”

Kwabena Donkor, who is also the Member of Parliament for the Pru East constituency revealed that the Minority in Parliament in 2018 made consistent demands on the government to produce the guarantees for the PDS deal however government failed to do so.

“We insisted on they producing the guarantees, last year, for us to sight the guarantees. The Government of Ghana [Ministry of Energy and Ministry of Finance] ignored our request.”

—citinewsroom