Energy Minister John Jinapor has taken a firm step toward restoring financial integrity at the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) by shutting down all of the company’s bank accounts except one, now housed at GCB Bank.
“I’ve closed all of ECG’s accounts except for one single holding account, which we’ve transferred to a commercial bank, GCB.
“I insisted that it should be transferred to a state bank,” the Minister stated in a candid interview on Citi FM, signalling what could be a landmark policy shift in the management of public utilities.
The move comes on the back of longstanding concerns about ECG’s financial mismanagement, opacity in fund distribution, and its deviation from the energy sector’s cash waterfall mechanism — a framework designed to ensure equitable distribution of revenue among sector players, including Independent Power Producers (IPPs).
“You heard the IPPs complain. You heard PURC complain that ECG was not adhering to the cash waterfall mechanism,” Jinapor noted.
The Minister disclosed that ECG had for years relied on costly overdrafts to make weekly payments to IPPs — a practice he criticised for generating avoidable interest liabilities at the end of every month.
“What ECG used to do was to take overdrafts and pay the IPPs every week. So by the end of the month, these overdrafts accrue a lot of interest,” he explained.
To address this, Jinapor said monthly disbursements will now be overseen by the cash waterfall committee, which convenes on the 27th of every month.
The centralisation of funds under a single account at a state-owned bank is meant to streamline this process and improve monitoring.
