The National Democratic Congress (NDC) has identified poor revenue collection by the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) as the key factor crippling the energy sector and exacerbating the country’s erratic power supply.

According to the NDC Manifesto Spokesperson on Energy, Edward Bawa, ECG's inability to collect adequate revenues has hampered its capacity to meet financial obligations to Independent Power Producers (IPPs).

In an interview with JoyNews, he highlighted that in March 2023, ECG collected only GH₵ 394 million of an expected GH₵ 1.6 billion, a revenue shortfall of about 76%.

"In March 2023, the expected revenue they [ECG] were supposed to collect based on the tariff that has been approved was around GH₵ 1.6 billion. The actual revenue they collected was around GH₵394 million, so a shortfall of about 76 per cent. So basically, you cannot be making those payments.

“Can you explain why you have an installed capacity of ASKA being 370 megawatts, let’s say based on their efficiency and other things, they should be doing around 300 megawatts so how come they are running around 100 megawatts? There should be a reason for it … and part of the reason is that they cannot even procure fuel to run the ASKA plant,” he said.

The crisis deepened with Sunon Asogli Power Ltd. ceasing operations due to ECG's $259 million debt. The company explained that the shutdown was necessary as it could no longer sustain operations without the overdue payments being honoured.

Read also: Sunon Asogli Power shuts down due to $259m debt owed by ECG

However, ECG’s acting Managing Director, Ing. David Asamoah, has announced steps to address the crisis, including a shift from monthly to weekly payments to IPPs.

He assured that Sunon Asogli would resume operations in the coming weeks as the company works to resolve the financial challenges.

“Sunon Asogli has gone off because of debts. But the good news about Sunon Asogli is that they are going to be back in the coming weeks because we have almost resolved the issue that made them go off,” he said.

“We started paying them on a weekly basis, not monthly.”