Termination of PDS deal won’t mar Ghana-US relations – Ofori-Atta

The Minister of Finance, Mr Ken Ofori-Atta has downplayed fears that the termination of the Power Distribution Services (PDS) Ghana Limited deal will adversely affect the relationship between Ghana and the United States of America (USA).

In a television interview on Citi TV on Wednesday night [October 30, 2019], Mr Ofori-Atta said it was healthy that Ghana and USA shared varied views concerning the future of the agreement.

While accepting that Ghana’s decision cost the country some US$190 million, he said the US also lost the opportunity to use Ghana to evacuate power, although the country had a more favourable environment for that to be done.

He said that the two nations are focused on building a much stronger relation following the PDS debacle. “In every relationship, there will be a point of departure. The point of departure is the interpretation of events and that is okay. I think that it is healthy but what does that mean? It means that

America does not get to use Ghana to evacuate power because I think that we are the best place to get it done and then we also do not get US$190 million. But the relationship is much stronger than that. I suspect that this too will pass and we will go on to be great partners,” he said.

The Minister announced, on The Point of View, that Ghana will now adopt a more opened tendering process in selecting a new partner to replace PDS.
According to him, the US government’s withdrawal of the second tranche amount of US$190 million

now gives Ghana more time to select the partner. The government had initially planned to use restrictive tendering to select the new partner due to the limited time it had.