Privatisation alone cannot resolve the deepening debt crisis in Ghana’s power sector, Energy Sector Specialist Dr. Nii Darko Asante has cautioned, urging a more structural and transparent approach to sector reform.
Speaking during a High-Level Dialogue on “Addressing Ghana’s Energy Sector Challenges for Economic Transformation,” Dr. Asante emphasized that financial shortfalls in the power sector are rooted in longstanding mismatches between electricity production costs and the revenues collected from end-users.
“We talk about debt—sometimes we call them legacy debts—but at the core is a persistent shortfall between the cost to generate and distribute electricity and the amount actually paid by consumers,” he noted.
He pointed out that Independent Power Producers (IPPs), backed by government guarantees, continue to supply power even when distribution companies default on payments. These unpaid amounts, he said, ultimately fall back on the state and, by extension, the public.
“When these guarantees are called, the president or the energy minister won’t be paying from their personal wallets. The burden comes back to us—the taxpayers—either through higher tariffs or increased levies,” he stressed.
One of the most pressing concerns, Dr. Asante said, is the lack of transparent, publicly available data on the sector’s financial gap. “We don’t even have a definitive figure. Is it GH¢100 million per month? GH¢200 million? Nobody seems to know for sure,” he said, describing the information vacuum as a barrier to effective policymaking.
This lack of clarity, he argued, fuels speculation and undermines confidence in the sector’s management. Whether the shortfall is due to underpriced tariffs, surplus generation capacity, or inefficiencies in the distribution chain remains a subject of public debate—rather than one informed by verifiable data.
Dr. Asante also warned of a potential shift from excess capacity to a looming power shortfall, made worse by the politicisation of energy sector planning. “GRIDCo knows how much power is on the grid, yet we end up arguing over whether there’s a shortfall instead of simply referring to the data,” he lamented.
He concluded that without addressing the fundamental lack of accountability and reliable information, calls for reforms such as privatising the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) may fall short.
“You can’t manage what you don’t measure,” Dr. Asante asserted, reinforcing his call for greater transparency and evidence-based reform as the only path to sustainable progress in the energy sector.