New AMERI deal senseless – Alex Mould

The Government of Ghana must rescind its decision to renegotiate the AMERI deal signed by the John Mahama administration, Mr Alex Mould, a former Chief Executive of the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC), has stated.

The Akufo-Addo administration recently began taking steps to amend portions of the controversial $510 million deal.

The current government believes that there was no value-for-money in the deal signed by the NDC administration, hence the renegotiations.

The renegotiated deal is expected to receive final approval from parliament when the House resumes from recess, after President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo approved the deal.

Before the house went on recess last week, Majority Leader Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, said parliament needs to “interrogate the figures to know that what we are doing is in the best interest of the country, which explains why [the debate on the deal has been delayed].”

“I spoke to the Finance Minister, I spoke to the Attorney General plus the Minister of Energy and we all decided to tarry a while and have a closer look at it,” the Minister of Parliamentary Affairs said.

Mr Mould told Accra-based Citi FM on Tuesday, 31 July that the renegotiation of the deal makes no economic sense given that the agreement has travelled for long.

He said: “Despite all these documents with flaws, the economics doesn’t make sense. You have an agreement that has traversed about two and a half years, about half its life where you have agreed to pay $3.5 million for the fixed cost of these plans.”

“The question is; why don’t you just pay the premium up to the five years and you don’t have to pay any capital recovery anymore,” Alex Mould stated.

The new company has offered to pay AMERI an amount of $52,160,560, with the government paying the remaining $39 million to the Dubai-based AMERI Energy to wash its hands off the deal entirely.