ECG recovers GH¢2.5 billion from customers

The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has successfully retrieved half of its total debts after conducting a nationwide revenue mobilisation exercise to recover all unpaid bills from its customers. The company had aimed to recover all debts owed by all categories of customers, including state-owned enterprises (SOEs), which amounted to GH¢5.7 billion for power already consumed from 2022 to this year.

During the one-month exercise which lasted from March 20 to April 20, 2023, the company temporarily closed all administrative offices and deployed its staff to be collectors on the field to recover the debts. However, engineers, technical staff, operations, and customer care units continued to be at work to attend to customers.

ECG’s Managing Director, Samuel Dubik Mahama, explained that the debt situation had reached worrying levels, hence the need to deploy all administrative staff to be collectors for the ECG. He also revealed that the company spent GH¢500 million to offset debts of some public institutions, including GH¢200m for Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) and GH¢120 million for Ghana Police Service, among others. Furthermore, ECG is considering using the debts of some state institutions to clear tax obligations owed to the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) amounting to GH¢1.2 billion.

Mr. Dubik Mahama was confident that if all the over 4.5 million consumers with prepaid and postpaid being 50 percent pay their bills, ECG will make GH¢2 billion a month as a company. He also mentioned that since he assumed office, the company had increased its revenue significantly by implementing end-to-end digitalisation, increasing bulk vendors from 400 to over 1,000, and raising quota vending from GH¢100 million to GH¢200 million a month. Revenue from quota vending had risen from GH¢4.6 million to GH¢13 million a day, translating into a monthly increase from GH¢100 million to over GH¢200 million a month.

–The Post Ghana