The Managing Director of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), Ing. Julius Kpekpena, has made a candid admission that the power distributor would have collapsed under its debt burden long ago were it not for its status as a state-owned enterprise.
Speaking on TV3’s Hot Issues programme on Sunday, Kpekpena said government ownership remains the sole reason banks continue to extend credit to ECG despite a balance sheet that would ordinarily disqualify the company from accessing financing.
“If ECG were not state-owned, we would have been bankrupt long ago. If you take our books now, you might think we are not creditworthy because we owe a lot of people, but ECG is owned by the government, so banks still want to lend to us,” he said.
The admission reflects the scale of ECG’s financial exposure. The World Bank warned in August 2025 that ECG’s debt could reach $9 billion by end of 2026 if unaddressed, attributing the crisis to non-cost-reflective tariffs, high distribution and collection losses, and substantial arrears to independent power producers. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) separately noted that ECG covered just 11 percent of its bills in 2024, a figure that rose to 48 percent by mid-2025 following renegotiated power purchase agreements and reduced reliance on expensive liquid fuels.
Despite this backdrop, Kpekpena said lenders remain willing to engage because they view state ownership as an implicit guarantee backed by the Ghanaian public. He disclosed that a bank approached ECG as recently as last week seeking to establish a business relationship.
The MD also argued that ECG’s finances have stabilised markedly since the current management assumed office, pointing to improved cash flows across the energy value chain. He referenced a warning by the Finance Minister in February 2025 that the power sector represented the single greatest risk to Ghana’s economy, insisting that assessment no longer applies.
“Last year in February, the finance minister described the power sector as the greatest risk to the economy. Today, nobody is talking about that. ECG has stabilised finances in the entire sector,” he said.
The comments come against a complex backdrop for ECG’s leadership. In October 2025, Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee referred ECG management to the Attorney-General for possible prosecution over gross financial indiscipline and budget overruns exceeding GH¢189.2 million across 13 expenditure items during 2023. Kpekpena, who was acting MD at the time, acknowledged overspending but said corrective measures had since been implemented.