FACT-CHECK: Akufo-Addo’s government NOT the first to reduce electricity tariffs, Afenyo-Markin’s claim FALSE
Claim: President Akufo-Addo’s government is the first to reduce electricity tariffs in the Fourth Republic
Source: Alexander Afenyo-Markin, Majority Leader
Verdict: FALSE
Researched by:David Yovo-Ofori
On Tuesday, June 11, 2024, Majority Leader, Alexander Afenyo-Markin, claimed on the floor of Parliament that Akufo-Addo’s government is the first under the Fourth Republic to reduce electricity tariffs.
In a 2-hour, 24-minute, and 32-second video shared on the Parliament of Ghana’s Facebook page, Afenyo-Markin highlighted the track record of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government, citing some of the developmental projects and initiatives undertaken by the current government.
He could be heard saying: “Mr. Speaker, this government acknowledges that our people face various forms of challenges. It is in light of this that history will remember this government as the only government in this Fourth Republic ever to reduce electricity tariffs. In 2018, the government of Ghana announced various tariff reductions ranging between 18% – 30%. It is a matter of record, this has never happened in the history of this country,” he said between 54-minute, 12 seconds, and 54-minute, 37 seconds of the video.
He reiterated this assertion on July 18, 2024, on GTV during an exclusive interview. This report seeks to verify the claim by the Majority Leader, who is also the Member of Parliament for Effutu.
Fact-Check
According to a December 2020 report by the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC), titled: “A Study of The Trends in Electricity Tariffs in Ghana Between 2010 and 2020,” there have been two instances of electricity tariff reductions since 1992.
They are:
March 2011: A tariff reduction was implemented under the John Evans Atta-Mills government.
March 2018: Another tariff reduction was introduced by the Akufo-Addo administration.
Page 6 of the report gives a breakdown of the direction of tariff changes over a 10 year period. In all, there were 11 increments, two reductions and 16 instances of zero increments.
Figure 1: Screenshot illustrating instances of tariff changes between 2010 and 2020
Red indicates periods where tariffs increased.
Green indicates periods where tariffs decreased.
Blue indicates periods where no changes were made to tariffs.
GhanaFact’s checks from publicly available data published by the PURC showed that there are residential and non-residential users in the Tariff Category captured under the Fourth Schedule of tariff adjustment gazettes.
For the purpose of this fact-check, we present the residential rates in June 2010, i.e. adjustment preceding the March 2011 reduction and the rates of September 2011, the next upward adjustment after the reduction.
Figure 2: Tariff adjustment for three cycles showing a reduction of tariffs
It can be observed from above that in March 2011 reductions were recorded in the second and third categories of residential user tariffs.
Online news platform, Ghana Business News reported the development as did international business news portal Bloomberg.
From the above, the claim by Afenyo-Markin that the Akufo-Addo administration was the first to reduce electricity tariffs under the Fourth Republic is incorrect because the first such reduction was in 2011.
