ECOWAS ministers meet in Bamako on securing electricity exchanges
Bamako, Mali (PANA) - "The fight against poverty, the quest for daily well-being for our people and the economic prosperity of our States could not succeed without important milestones being set in crucial sectors such as energy," Malian Prime Minister Boubou Cissé said on Tuesday in Bamako, while opening a ministerial meeting of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) on trade in electricity.
The meeting brings together ministers of Finance and Energy of six ECOWAS countries around the issue of securing cross-border exchanges of electric energy.
The Prime Minister expressed satisfaction that ECOWAS has made the energy sector one of the community's priorities and understood the need to increase regional cooperation in this sector, through the pooling of energy resources and the marketing of electricity through cross-border exchanges.
The objective of the Bamako meeting is to find a sustainable mechanism for the payment of electricity purchase bills by importers and the guarantee of available and reliable energy and to ensure that each stakeholder plays its full role.
Countries participating in the meeting are Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea, Liberia, Mali and Sierra Leone, as well as experts from the World Bank, the West African Power Pool (WAPP) and the ECOWAS Regional Electricity Regulatory Authority (ARREC).
In addition to the six countries involved in this programme, ECOWAS includes Benin, Cape Verde, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal and Togo.
-0- PANA GT/JSG/MTA/AR 4Mar2020
