The Chamber of Independent Power Producers, Distributors and Bulk Consumers (CIPDiB) is demanding an unbiased investigation into the commercial activities of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), as the latter failed to meet its revenue target.

ECG is currently facing an urgent crisis of immense financial constrain although the government had cleared some debts it owed.

According to the Chief Executive of the Chamber, Elikplim Apetogbor the Sector having a monopoly status to sell energy should have huge cash reserves and also be able to make a profit as a financial backup.

Speaking at a forum organised by the Institute of Economic Affairs in Accra on Wednesday, 27 October 2021, Mr Apetogbor said: “Ghana’s electricity sector faces an urgent transparency crisis of immense financial strain that deserves an unbiased investigation and assessment into the commercial and operational activities of the actors and stakeholders of the sector to ascertain the real reasons for its inability to meet the required revenue target that compensates the actors of the electricity supply value chain. These actors include regulators - MoE, MoF, Energy Commission, PURC, ECG, GRIDCo and the IPPs.”

Recommending ways for ECG to maximise revenue to stabilise the power sector, Mr Apetognor said: “As of today, a good number of consumers are still on credit meters and hinder ECG’s revenue mobilisation. ECG has all it takes to transfer all these customers to the prepaid meter to maximize the revenue requirement. If this is really the threat to the collection drive. This action will be one of the immediate shows of a private investor. So the question is, why is ECG not doing this actively?”

He further quizzed that If ECG’s recurrent revenue shortfalls are due to technical reasons, “as we are sometimes made to believe, then the investment so far made in replacing the obsolete equipment or transformers should have yielded a positive impact on the revenue gap by now. We are aware, PDS invested to address some of these technical issues just as the ECG itself is currently doing. So, this can no longer be an excuse.”

Mr Apetogbor also suggested that ECG cut down on their cost of operations saying: “Again, records and reports have it that PDS had significantly reduced ECG’s cost of operations - direct costs and other avoidable costs to a very significant level leading to their revenue maximisation at the time. For a fact, they were raking in about 98% of invoices.”

Attached is the full speech: