The Ugandan environmentalists whose campaign forced the World Bank to postpone a meeting to determine the fate of the Bujagali Dam have challenged the government and the Bretton Woods institutions to make public the Power Purchase Agreement, which they say would hurt the consumer and the taxpayer. 

The Power Purchase Agreement between Uganda and the AES Nile Power, lays out the amount of money to be paid out to the latter, and how much the consumer will have to pay per unit consumed.

There are allegations that the agreement favours AES at the expense of the consumer.

How much the consumer will pay for power after Bujagali starts generation remains unknown. The environmentalists who travelled through Europe and the US campaigning against Bujagali last week, said the only reason for its being kept secret was because it was suspect. 

Currently, the consumer pays 7.9 US cents per kilowatt-hour, up from 6.5 US cents, despite the addition of an extra dam in 2000. Sources say that when the Bujagali power plant starts generation, power is likely to cost 10.5 US cents. It is a figure that both AES and the Ministry of Energy decline to confirm.

There has been a stand off between government and environmentalists over Bujagali for the last seven years over questions of transparency. The World Bank's Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (Miga) was to have made a decision over Bujagali at the beginning of June, but accusations that the project was going ahead on what campaigners called "fraudulent reports" forced the board to postpone the decision.

Both the government and AES deny that the World Bank was forced to delay its decision. The last time The EastAfrican spoke to the State Minister for Energy Daudi Migereko, he said that the meeting would be held sometime at the beginning of this month.

On Wednesday last week, the Swedish Minister for Development, Jan O. Karlsson, reported to the Swedish parliament that his government had managed to get the Miga board to delay the decision on the dam until the inspection panel's report had been published.

The Permanent Secretary in Uganda's Ministry of Energy Kabagambe Kaliisa, denied that a meeting had been scheduled for June 4 as reported in the local press. He said that publishing the inspection panel's report was a matter of routine.

"There has been a delay," said Mr Kaliisa. "But it was a blessing in disguise because we got a better deal."

"AES is guaranteed to earn money. Miga is guaranteed to get its money back. It is only the consumer and the Ugandan tax payer who are not sure how much they will loose," Mr Frank Muramuzi, president of the National Association of Professional Environmentalists, NAPE told The EastAfrican. "Our only wish is that the people should know this."

Mr Muramuzi called the project "economically risky," pointing out that the 250mw projection was unlikely to be met because the dam will be too close to Owen Falls and Kiira power stations. He accused the government of trying to forge ahead the project without adequately consulting the public.