$700m still owed in power sector, minority says
The numbers don’t add up. That is the central message from Ghana’s Parliamentary Minority, which is challenging the government’s repeated assurances that the country’s beleaguered energy sector is on the mend financially, and demanding that ministers come before Parliament to prove it.
At the heart of the dispute are two figures the Minority says it cannot reconcile with official narratives: over $500 million allegedly still owed to Independent Power Producers, and more than $200 million outstanding to fuel supply companies, debts the government has publicly suggested no longer exist.
Collins Adomako-Mensah, Deputy Ranking Member on Parliament’s Energy Committee, voiced the Minority’s frustration bluntly at a Tuesday press conference.
“The Ministry of Finance announced last year that it had cleared all the debts to IPPs. The government also credited itself with financial improvement at ECG. However, the data available to us is that the government owes IPPs over $500 million and over $200 million to companies that supplied fuel for power generation,” he said.
Beyond the disputed figures, the Minority has zeroed in on the Dumsor levy, a dedicated energy sector recovery charge paid by Ghanaians, and what it says is a troubling absence of clarity around how those funds have been collected and deployed.
“If the levy has been collected but not properly applied, Ghanaians have the right to know. If it has been misappropriated, those responsible must be held accountable,” Adomako-Mensah said.
The Minority wants the Energy and Finance Ministers summoned before Parliament to present independently verified accounts of the sector’s finances. It has also announced plans to file a Right to Information request to compel the release of detailed levy records, signaling it is prepared to go beyond parliamentary pressure if necessary.
The political battle over numbers is unfolding against a backdrop of genuine crisis on the ground. The Akosombo GRIDCo Substation fire on April 23 gutted national generation capacity by an estimated 720 to 1,000 megawatts overnight, halting electricity exports and triggering emergency repairs. A technical committee under Ing. William Amuna is investigating the blaze, with a parallel security probe also underway. Energy Minister John Jinapor has confirmed partial restoration, though work on remaining units continues.
That emergency layered onto an already disrupted April, ECG had already subjected parts of Accra to planned outages between April 8 and 17 for transformer maintenance across Adenta, La, Teshie-Nungua and Lashibi substations.
For many Ghanaians, the combination of events has revived the dread of dumsor, the era of chronic, unpredictable blackouts that defined life in Ghana not so long ago. The Minority is betting that fear, combined with unanswered financial questions, will keep pressure on the government well into the next parliamentary session.
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