ACCRA, Oct 28 (The African Portal) – Ghana’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has referred the management of the state-owned Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) to the Attorney-General’s Department for possible prosecution over what lawmakers described as “gross financial indiscipline” and breaches of the country’s Public Financial Management Act.
The referral followed a parliamentary hearing on Tuesday, where the committee, chaired by Samuel Atta-Mills, Member of Parliament for Komenda-Edina-Eguafo-Abrem, said audits had uncovered widespread irregularities in ECG’s 2023 financial operations.
According to the committee, ECG exceeded its approved budget across 13 expenditure items, overspending by 189.2 million Ghanaian cedis ($12.6 million). The excesses included spending on foreign training, cleaning, hotel accommodation, consultancy, and publicity without board approval.
“Those managers who were involved need to face the Attorney-General for prosecution. It’s as simple as that,” Atta-Mills said.
An audit presented to the committee showed that ECG had budgeted 21 million cedis for foreign training but spent 91 million cedis. Cleaning costs rose from 2.8 million to 10.4 million cedis, hotel expenses from 9.3 million to 12.2 million cedis, and consultancy costs from 40 million to 58.6 million cedis. Stakeholder engagement expenses surged from 3.1 million to 49 million cedis, while publicity costs increased from 5.7 million to 21.8 million cedis.
Atta-Mills said the spending spree demonstrated poor fiscal discipline and undermined the company’s justification for frequent electricity tariff increases.
“If we manage our resources efficiently, there would be no need for continuous tariff increments. The citizens of Ghana cannot continue to bear the cost of inefficiency,” he said.
The committee also found that ECG failed to remit 70.9 million cedis in withholding taxes to the Ghana Revenue Authority within the required 14 days, and had underpaid State-Owned Enterprises and Independent Power Producers by 1.29 billion cedis under the Cash Waterfall Mechanism—a government system for distributing energy sector revenues.
The PAC directed the Attorney-General to investigate the breaches and take appropriate legal action against officials found culpable.
Responding to the committee, ECG’s acting Managing Director, Julius Kpekpena, admitted to overspending but said the company had introduced corrective measures to strengthen financial controls. He explained that some of the funds retained under the Cash Waterfall Mechanism were used to pay contractors and purchase fuel for power generation, though he acknowledged that the actions were not in full compliance with the law.
“We are not saying that holding it was justified, but ECG used part of the funds to pay contractors and buy liquid fuel for generation,” he said.
Kpekpena added that the company had since instituted full compliance with financial regulations and that all allocations are now approved by the Energy Sector Committee.
