After numerous warnings about the mismanagement of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), it is becoming clear that the carefully maintained façade through media campaigns and celebrity endorsements by the company’s management is starting to crumble, revealing a concerning reality that threatens not just the existence of the company but the sustainability of the country’s budget.
For the past few years, the public has been shouldering the financial burden of subsidising ECG’s operations, raising serious concerns about the political will to reform the utility company and push it to operate with a business-oriented mindset. Despite longstanding signs of inefficiency, politicians have failed to take decisive action to fix ECG.
Since the inception of the IMF program in 2022, a major condition was for the government to establish systems to eliminate the recurrent under-recoveries borne by the budget by:
- Programming for the under-recoveries in the budget.
- Taking corrective actions to prevent the materialisation of the under-recoveries.
However, there has been no sign of improvement, contrary to what the company makes the public believe.
