Clean your house before raising tariffs — Abena Osei-Asare to ECG

Chairperson of Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC), Abena Osei-Asare, has urged the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) to address issues of financial mismanagement before making any further requests for tariff adjustments. Her comments follow deliberations at a PAC sitting that highlighted major discrepancies in ECG’s expenditure, as captured in the 2024 Auditor-General’s Report. The report revealed that the company’s foreign training expenses rose sharply from a budgeted GHS21 million to GHS91 million, cleaning costs increased from GHS2.8 million to GHS10.4 million, and consultancy fees surged from GHS40 million to GHS58.6 million. Meanwhile, electricity tariffs for all consumer categories were increased by 1.14 percent on October 1, 2025, under ECG’s quarterly review mechanism. The company is also seeking approval from the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) for a proposed 225 percent increase in its Distribution Service Charge for the 2025–2029 tariff period. Speaking on Channel One TV’s The Point of View on Monday, November 10, Mrs. Osei-Asare confirmed that ECG had significantly overspent its approved budget. “The confirmed budget was GHS144 million, they ended up doing a little over GHS300 million. So the excess was about GHS189 million. We felt that they should clean their house because the reason they claim they are increasing tariffs is because they claim they are not raising enough revenue to enable them pay the IPPs and also take care of other equally important things,” she said. The PAC Chair also revealed that ECG had collected about GHS11.9 billion in its Cash Waterfall Mechanism account — the account through which all revenues are pooled before disbursements are made to Independent Power Producers (IPPs). “Most of the people who come in there are not people who were there when these infractions were created or occurred. If for one reason or the other you feel that they will have to come once you draw our attention to it, the PAC, we have the powers of a high court, we can also summon them to appear before us to make their submission on an infraction that they have been,” Osei-Asare said. She commended some current executives and heads of institutions who have shown commitment to addressing legacy financial irregularities despite not being responsible for them. “There are a couple of CEOs and DGs who discharged themselves very well even though they were not there when all these infractions took place. A typical example was the CEO for MIIF; there was another from the Northern Development Authority. He had assumed the role, was it two or three months ago, but he had taken steps,” she added. Mrs. Osei-Asare reiterated PAC’s commitment to promoting transparency and accountability across public institutions, stressing that effective oversight is essential to restoring public trust in state-owned enterprises.