Vice President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, had charged the management to Electricity Company of Ghana to improve its collection rate to help turnaround the fortunes of the country's energy sector.

The power distribution company, ECG, currently has a collection rate of 66 percent and the situation is partly accountable to the cyclical debts in the energy sector.

"If we don't really handle this sector well, it can really create problems for your economy because the sector accounts for hundreds of dollars in bills and one of the biggest problems, why this has become an 'Achilles heel' for the sector, comes in the area of collection of revenue"

"If we produce power and we're only able to collect less than 60 percent of the revenue it means we've lost 40 percent of the revenue and we're going to put other players in the sector in trouble particularly in the generation, transmission and distribution of power to consumers so the issue of solving the collection problem at ECG is a major part of solving the problems in the energy sector."

Dr. Bawumia said this at the launch of the ECG Mobile Application in Accra on Tuesday, February 18.

The new ECG Mobile application; dubbed "ECG Power" was built and developed by a team of Ghanaian staff at the ECG and will allow some 2.8 million out of the 3.8 million customers of ECG across the country to purchase prepaid and postpaid power at their own convenience.

Essentially, the App can be used by ECG customers who have Smart Prepayment Meters to recharge their electricity credit any time of the day as well as do same for family and friends.

There are mobile money payment options and consumption information for consumers who use the App.