Sunon Asogli Power (Ghana) Limited, an independent power producer, has indefinitely shut down its 560MW plant, over the delay in payment by the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG).
In a press statement released today on the 16th of October 2024, it said that the decision to shut down its power plant was a result of their inability to fund the operations due to the delayed payment of ECG.
The statement signed by the chairman, Qun Yang reads;
Sunon Asogli Power (Ghana) Limited regrets that they have been compelled to suspend
operations since Tuesday, 8th October 2024. The shutdown happened at 5 PM that day. This difficult decision was necessitated by our inability to fund our operations because of the failure of the Electricity Company of Ghana to honour their overdue payment obligations and their various promises to that effect.
Sunon Asogli Power (Ghana) has over the years been very considerate in its dealings with ECG and the government, and, unlike other independent power producers, has not even invoiced ECG for accrued idle capacity charges. Despite this, ECG owes Sunon Asogli a net (excluding fuel) receivable amount of $259 million as at the end of September 2024.
Our debt has grown by 23% on the net balance, between January 2024 and September 2024 and only 22.6% of the invoices for the period have been paid by ECG from the Cash Waterfall Mechanism.
We deeply regret the impact of this decision on the national power supply.
We expect the Ministry of Finance to intervene for us to return to operations as soon as possible.