Outgoing United States Ambassador to Ghana, Virginia Palmer, has expressed deep concern over the financial state of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), describing the situation as more dire than previously understood.
In a yet-to-be-aired interview on The Point of View with Bernard Avle on Channel One TV, Ambassador Palmer warned that the ECG’s ongoing losses pose a significant threat to Ghana’s economic stability and require urgent reform.
“The ECG is bleeding, exchequer, and it’s bleeding more than we thought,” she said. “When the Minister of Finance, Dr. Cassiel Ato Forson, spoke at the Economic Dialogue, he said $2.2 million a year, which is essentially at the scale of the IMF programme. There are losses either at the electricity poles or in the counting rooms, and they are enormous.”
Palmer’s comments echo mounting calls for transparency and efficiency within Ghana’s power distribution sector. Her remarks also highlight the broader implications of ECG’s financial woes, especially in relation to Ghana’s ongoing programme with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
She noted that technical and commercial losses—whether through faulty infrastructure or revenue leakages—are undermining the country’s fiscal health and hampering efforts to deliver reliable electricity.
Ambassador Palmer’s frank assessment adds to a growing list of stakeholders demanding structural reforms to salvage ECG and protect the economy from further strain.
Her tenure, which has seen close collaboration with Ghana on economic, governance, and energy issues, ends amid calls for greater accountability and results-driven leadership in the utility sector.
