45 State Enterprises have not submitted any financial statement to the Ministry of Finance since 2016, in contravention of Act 921 and international best practices.

These entities include one State Owned Enterprises, 34 Owned State Enterprises and 12 Joint Venture Companies.

However, 14 out of 129 SOEs and OSEs complied with the requirement of section 93 of Act 921 to submit quarterly reports on their operations in relation to their 2018 approved business plan to the Sector Minister.

They include Cocoa Processing Company, Drivers Vehicles Licensing Authority, Ghana Civil Aviation Authority, Ghana Cylinder Manufacturing Company, Ghana Re, GIFEC, Ghana Investment Promotion Center, Ghana Standards Authority, State Housing Company and the Volta River Authority.

According to the report, only SOEs in the energy sector complied with section 77 of the Public Financial Management (PFM Act) which requires them to submit to the Minister on a quarterly basis, a record of their outstanding debt and new borrowings including overdrafts and corporate debt securities issued.

Notwithstanding the generally low compliance among State Enterprises to the requisite deadlines for submission of their audited financial and other operational information, the report said, there have been positive developments since the inception of this Report in 2016.

First, the coverage of the report has consistently increased as a result of improved responsiveness of the entities to the specified reporting obligations. The maiden edition in 2016, which was published in 2017, covered only 18 entities.

Secondly, some State Enterprises have cleared their backlog of unaudited financial statement, with some of them going back several years. Notable mentions include Architectural Engineering Services Limited, Cocoa Processing Company, Electricity Company of Ghana, Ghana Cylinder Manufacturing Compnay, GIHOC and Tema Development Corporation.

Also, the quality of data used in the financial analysis have also improved significantly over the years.