ECG’s private sector participation moves to procurement, with concessions due by June 2027

Ghana has appointed a transaction adviser to procure concessionaires for the Electricity Company of Ghana, with awards expected by June 2027, according to the IMF’s latest review. The state keeps ownership of the network, and the private role is billing, metering and revenue collection rather than a sale.

A transaction adviser has been appointed to run the procurement of concessionaires for the Electricity Company of Ghana, with the concessions expected to be awarded by June 2027, according to the IMF’s most recent review of Ghana’s programme.

The model on the table is the concession and public-private partnership arrangement endorsed by cabinet, under which private operators run specific functions while the state keeps ownership of the network, with billing and metering the functions most often named.

The case rests on the losses, which an IMF paper puts at 27.1% of distribution in 2024, with ECG collecting about 86% of what it bills.

Ghana’s energy sector shortfall has fallen to $1.4 billion, and net payables to independent power producers and fuel suppliers stood at $1.7 billion in March 2026, down from $2.1 billion at the end of 2024, after debt renegotiations and payments made through government interventions.

The Fund wants the quarterly tariff adjustments maintained and the Cash Waterfall Mechanism implemented in full. It also asks for regular publication of the audits on ECG’s revenue collection accounts.

Ghana has been here before, since Power Distribution Service took over ECG’s networks in 2018 under a twenty-year concession tied to the US Millennium Challenge compact, and the government terminated it the following year, forfeiting about $190 million of compact funding.

Installed generation capacity stood at about 5,641MW in 2024, while ECG’s peak demand was roughly 2,700MW.

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