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Former Managing Director of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), Samuel Dubik Mahama, has revealed that the company’s revenue performance had been poor for many years.
Mr. Mahama, who served for two years and four months, described his tenure as a period of hard lessons and critical reforms. According to him, ECG’s financial health had long been neglected, with the company operating on a stagnant revenue scale of about GHS 450 to 500 million monthly.
“There’s one thing that I have learned in my two years, four months of occupying that chair is that the theory that Mike Tyson gave that you always have a plan until you enter the ring and you are hit in the nose, and then you realize that everything is thrown out because you can wake up in the morning, all systems go, everything is working perfectly. You’re chugging along nicely. By two o’clock, there’s fuel shortage here. There’s this here, there’s that.
“Now the question you ask yourself is, the cost of unsold energy. So what do you do? But you know, one of the things that we don’t give credit for because most people don’t have the backstory is that ECG was never ever at the table. ECG was never at the table in terms of revenue because ECG’s revenue when I joined the board this time in memorial and everybody was talking was always like this. There’s no utilities revenue that flatlines. It was on the same wavelength. It was about 450, 500 million, 450, 500 million.” He said.
Samuel Dubik Mahama, however disclosed that the Electricity Company of Ghana under his leadership significant progress. He noted that by the time he left office, the company had increased its monthly revenue to GHS 1.5 billion, a milestone he attributes to reforms in digitization, metering, and operational efficiency.
He explained that when he assumed office, ECG’s monthly meter installation rate stood at a mere 2,500. By the time of his departure, that number had soared to an impressive 100,000 per month, a transformation he credits to internal operational efficiencies and a focused digital agenda.
“But thanks be to God, the minister in his last interview said what 1.5 billion right 1.5 billion is no mean feat to move a company that was never at the table because at that point everybody had to carry ECG. The main way or the single way for you to collect revenue is through metering. Now the question is, what’s the lifespan of a prepaid meter? That’s one thing most people don’t know. Prepaid meters do expire.
“PURC will do a beautiful job of giving ECG a tariff. ECG will fire the tariff into the meter while you are enjoying 2013 meter. unfortunately for for maybe Sule, Sule is on the 2022 meter so he’ll receive the new tariff.
“As at the time that I got into office ECG had a huge lack of meters in the system and ECG’s installation was about 2,500 meters a month. As at the time I was leaving office, they were such an efficient machine that they were doing about 100,000 meter installations in a month. All of these things require investment. You cannot have a multi-billion dollar or billion Cedi industry in Ghana and not invest in it.” He disclosed.
On the issue of ECG’s debt, the former Managing Director of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) said, “I sometimes hear the whole conversation around ECG’s debt, but nobody feels to calculate what portion of the debt falls under Forex losses. What is the portion? Because every single implement in ECG is in USD, you buy electricity in dollars, you sell it in Cedis. By the time you are going back to procure those dollars to pay, what’s the Forex rate? You come into the office in the morning, you are rich. By the time you close, you’re poor.”
Source: Elvisanokyenews.net
