In a country grappling with chronic power sector debt, the second part of a forensic audit by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) has uncovered a fresh dilemma: the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) under-declared GHc 5.3 billion in revenue in 2024 alone.
The revelation casts a long shadow over Ghana’s struggling power sector, already plagued by liquidity crises and recurring threats of supply cuts.
ECG, Ghana’s largest power distributor, has long been at the centre of the country’s energy sector woes, struggling to settle debts owed to power producers such as the Volta River Authority (VRA), Bui Power Authority (BPA), and Independent Power Producers (IPPs).
Yet, PwC’s findings suggest that ECG’s financial shortfalls may be, at least in part, self-inflicted.
The audit, covering January to December 2024, follows an earlier PwC review of ECG’s final quarter of 2023, which identified GHc 567 million in revenue discrepancies.
But the latest figures reveal a far deeper structural issue: in just one year, unreported revenue ballooned to GHc 5.3 billion, suggesting chronic inefficiencies in ECG’s accounting practices—or worse, deliberate financial mismanagement.
At the heart of the problem lies ECG’s fragmented revenue collection system. PwC identified that ECG operates 99 different bank accounts and 21 separate billing systems (20 legacy systems plus one modern system), making effective oversight difficult.
“ECG’s system for tracking revenue remains fragmented… making financial oversight difficult,” the auditors noted, highlighting how this complexity creates opportunities for revenue leakage.
Revenue collected through third-party vendors, including digital payment providers, is not always immediately reflected in ECG’s official accounts, creating opportunities for discrepancies and delays.
The cost of missing revenue
If ECG had fully accounted for its revenue in 2024, Ghana’s power producers would have been in a far stronger financial position.
Instead, ECG’s liquidity struggles meant that VRA received just GHc 412 million and Bui Power Authority GHc 323 million—payments that fell well below their actual receivables.
Meanwhile, the company prioritised commission payments to its revenue collection vendor—to the tune of GHc 402.59 million, a figure almost equal to what VRA received for generating the power ECG distributes.
The audit raises the question: why was a payment vendor compensated at nearly the same level as a power generator?
A crisis in revenue management
The Cash Waterfall Mechanism (CWM), introduced to ensure fair and structured allocation of energy sector revenues, was designed to prevent ECG from arbitrarily deciding payment priorities.
Yet, PwC’s audit suggests that ECG’s commission payments were deducted before full revenue declarations were made, undermining the mechanism’s intended function.
This financial opacity is not new. The previous PwC audit report covering October-December 2023 flagged a series of financial irregularities at ECG, including excessive emergency fuel purchases, costing GHc 136 million in just three months.
The latest report now confirms that rather than improving, ECG’s financial governance has deteriorated over a longer timeframe.
Ghana’s energy crisis is not simply a question of supply and demand. It is, at its core, a failure of financial discipline, regulatory oversight, and strategic planning.
ECG, by its very design, sits at the centre of the energy value chain—the single buyer of power from state-owned and private generators. Its financial health determines whether power plants stay operational or shut down.
If ECG’s revenue leakages continue, power producers may have no choice but to scale back generation, triggering a return to the crippling “dumsor” (load shedding) that Ghana has struggled to move beyond.
