ECOWAS meeting on energy opens in Bamako
Bamako, Mali (PANA) – A meeting of ministers in charge of Energy and Finance from six member countries of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) opened on Tuesday in Bamako to discuss the securization of payments related to cross-border exchanges on electric energy in West Africa, official sources told PANA.
Participates in the meeting are from Mali, Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire, Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso and Liberia and they have been looking into the technical and financial aspects of the securization of payment related to cross-border exchanges on energy.
The sources say that ECOWAS has over the past few years engaged in a series of structural reforms in terms of energy, focusing on its 2020 vision: an ECOWAS of States to that of peoples.
Therefore, the organization created a regional electricity market which was launched in 2018, followed by a regional directive on the securization of electric energy cross-border exchanges, adopted in 2018 by the sub-regional organisation.
That directive obtained the financial support of the World Bank through a budget aid and the establishment of a renewable fund.
Over the period 2019-2033, ECOWAS, through its regional electricity market, is considering achieving electric interconnectivity lines and building of electric power stations for about 36.392 million dollars (about 18.2 billion CFAF).
"Out of this amount, 25.912 million dollars, about 13 billion CFAF will be devoted to the production of electricity and 10.480 million dollars for the transport of energy 3, the director of the Energy Department of the ECOWAS Commission, Dabiré Bayaornibè, said on Monday at the meeting of experts.
In addition to the six countries concerned by the programme, ECOWAS also includes Senegal, Niger, Nigeria, Gambia, Ghana, Benin, Togo, Bissau Guinea and Cape Verde.
-0- PANA GT/TBM/MSA/VAO 3March2020
