Claim: Majority Leader Alexander Afenyo-Markin claims that the NPP government is the first to reduce electricity tariffs in the Fourth Republic.
Verification: The statement is false. The report shows that electricity tariffs were reduced in 2011.
Full-text
Majority leader and Member of Parliament for the Effutu constituency, Alexander Afenyo-Markin, has said that the current government is the first in history to reduce electricity tariffs under the Fourth Republic.
“Mr Speaker, this government acknowledges that our people face various challenges. It is in the light of this that history will remember this government as the only government in this fourth republic ever to reduce electricity tariffs,” he said on the floor of parliament on Tuesday, June 11, 2024.
“In 2018, the government of Ghana announced various tariff reductions ranging between 18 to 30 per cent. This has never happened in the history of this country,” he continued.
Parliament’s Tuesday, June 11 proceedings were live-streamed on Facebook, and Mr Afenyo-Markin can be heard claiming between minutes 54:13 and 55:00.
Mr Afenyo-Markin’s claim has been reported by leading online news portals such as ghanaweb.com and Modernghana.com.
“Majority leader, Alexander Kwamina Afenyo-Markin, has said the Akufo-Addo administration has distinguished itself as the only government in Ghana’s 4th republic to implement a reduction in electricity tariffs,” Ghanaweb.com reported.
Indeed, since the current government came into effect in 2017, there have been several instances of reductions in electricity tariffs. The most recent reduction was announced in March 2024 and will take effect from April 1, 2024, to June 30, 2024.
Has this government been the only one to have reduced electricity tariffs since the start of the Fourth Republic in 1992?
Verification
In December 2020, the Research Department of the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission, the country’s state agency mandated to regulate the activities of utility services, published a report titled “A Study on the Trends in Electricity Tariffs in Ghana between 2010 and 2020.” A copy of the report can be viewed here.
We observed in the report that between 2010 and 2020, there were only two instances of electricity tariff reductions.
One such reduction was in March 2011 (Page 6 of the report). The National Democratic Congress was the ruling party at the time.
Page 6 of the report showing a decrease in electricity tariffs in March 2011.
Corroborating this, we found a February 2011 news article published by Modernghana.com, with the headline “PURC announces reduction in tariffs effective in March.”
“Consumers of electricity and water will see a reduction in tariffs from March 1, following the decision of ]the] Public Utility and Regulatory Commission (PURC) to review tariffs downwards,” the story reads. Another article was found on Bloomberg.
Conclusion
The Majority leader’s claim that the Akufo-Addo-led government was the first to reduce electricity tariffs in the Fourth Republic is false.
