40% ECG commercial losses false – Dubik Mahama

Former Managing Director of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), Samuel Dubik Mahama, has strongly rejected claims that the company suffers losses as high as 40%.

This follows remarks by President John Dramani Mahama, who recently highlighted that ECG is facing significant commercial and technical losses of around 40%, which he argued undermines the utility’s financial health.

“The sick man of the power sector is ECG. You can’t run an electricity utility and make 40% commercial and technical losses and continue to think you have a viable business,” President Mahama had said.

Similarly, Energy Minister-designate John Jinapor, during his vetting on January 13, confirmed that ECG is grappling with losses of about 34%, attributing them to a combination of technical issues like ageing infrastructure and non-technical factors such as theft and poor revenue collection.

However, speaking on Channel One TV’s The Point of View with Bernard Avle, Samuel Dubik Mahama offered a different viewpoint. He suggested that ECG’s losses were primarily the result of challenges in change management and collection inefficiencies, questioning the figures cited by others.

“The 40% that is being brandished around is not a fair description of the losses. The document you purportedly sighted gives a base of 26% to 37%. That is because, within the year 2023, there was change management being implemented. Yes, the collection went down, but the funny thing is that, that year too, they collected more than GHC14 billion from the previous year [2022], which was from the system loss audit report that put the company at 26%,” Mahama explained.

He continued, “In the following year [2023], when the company collected about GHC14 billion, the company still had a range of 26% to 37% losses. Another reason is that the electricity you sell in November and December, you collect that money in January and February. Until you do that settlement, you cannot actually determine how perfect the collection was for the previous year.”

Mahama urged caution, stating, “I will beg that before anybody jumps to the conclusion of 40% or 30-something percent, let’s do that exercise and conclude on that part first.”