For years, we have been told that Ghana’s state-owned enterprises are being monitored, evaluated, and improved under the supervision of the State Interests and Governance Authority (SIGA). Thick reports are published annually. Tables are drawn. Ratios are calculated. Performance scores are assigned. On the surface, everything appears to be under control.
But when you read those reports carefully and compare them across years, a troubling pattern emerges. Some of Ghana’s state enterprises are not simply struggling. They are structurally failing. And the cost of that failure does not disappear. It quietly shifts to the taxpayer.
In 2023 alone, SIGA reported on 147 of the 175 specified entities on its register, meaning 84 per cent of the portfolio was captured in the formal review. That is not a small footprint. It includes 53 state-owned enterprises, 31 joint ventures, and dozens of other state entities across energy, transport, finance, agriculture, and infrastructure. This is not a side project of government. It is a parallel corporate economy embedded within the Republic.
Think of the state as a large investor. Through SIGA, it oversees more than a hundred companies with assets running into tens of billions of cedis. If you owned that many businesses privately and several of them lost money year after year, what would you do? You would restructure them. You would merge them. You would sell some. You might even close a few. You would not keep pouring money into the same holes indefinitely.
Yet that is precisely what appears to be happening in parts of our public enterprise system.
The reports show that a group of state-owned enterprises has been a consistent loss-maker across multiple fiscal years. Not one bad year. Not two. Several. In fact, SIGA’s own analysis categorises entities into consistent profit-makers, mixed performers, and consistent loss-makers over five-year periods. Some SOEs have recorded average annual losses running into hundreds of millions of cedis. These are not temporary setbacks caused by a global shock. They are repeated structural losses. In plain language, these companies spend more than they earn, year after year.
Worse still, some of them owe more than they own. The reports identify enterprises with negative equity positions, meaning their total liabilities exceed their total assets. When a company’s liabilities are greater than its assets, it is technically insolvent. In the private sector, that usually triggers drastic action. In the state sector, it often triggers a guarantee.
This is where the issue moves from boardrooms into the daily lives of citizens. Many of these struggling enterprises borrow money. The 2024 report lists the ten SOEs with the highest total liabilities, some carrying debt burdens in the billions of cedis. Because they are state-owned, lenders assume the government will stand behind them. In many cases, the government formally guarantees the loans. That means if the company cannot pay, the state must pay.
At that moment, what looked like a company’s debt becomes the nation’s debt.
This is how corporate weakness becomes a public burden.
The energy sector provides a clear example of how this cycle can build risk. Utilities often operate under politically sensitive pricing. Tariffs are sometimes kept below full cost recovery. Arrears accumulate. Borrowing increases. Government on-lending and guarantees expand. By the end of 2022, outstanding guarantees and on-lent facilities tied to specified entities ran into billions of cedis. On paper, the enterprise survives under SIGA’s oversight. In reality, the liability shifts quietly to the sovereign balance sheet.
When enough of these risks accumulate, they form a time bomb. If even a portion of those guarantees are called at the same time, government finances tighten suddenly. That can mean higher taxes, reduced public services, or more borrowing at the national level.
Meanwhile, dividend performance tells its own story. The reports show that dividend receipts are heavily concentrated in a small number of entities, particularly minority mining joint ventures and select financial institutions. Many wholly state-owned firms contribute little or nothing in dividends. In other words, the entities fully controlled by the state often generate the weakest returns. That suggests that discipline, governance structure, and incentives matter. It is not just about ownership. It is about how ownership is exercised and enforced.
To be fair, oversight has improved. SIGA’s reporting is more transparent. Performance contracts exist. Average performance scores are calculated across dimensions. Climate and gender metrics are being tracked. That is progress.
But transparency is not the same as reform.
If the same entities appear repeatedly as consistent loss-makers, and if no serious restructuring follows, then oversight becomes descriptive rather than corrective. It tells us what is wrong, but it does not fix what is wrong.
For the ordinary Ghanaian, this is not an abstract accounting debate. It affects electricity tariffs, fuel prices, public debt levels, and the government’s ability to fund schools, hospitals, and roads. Every cedi tied up in an inefficient enterprise is a cedi that cannot be used elsewhere.
The real question is simple. Are we managing these enterprises as strategic national assets under SIGA’s mandate, or are we maintaining them as permanent obligations?
Until we confront chronic loss-making entities with hard decisions rather than soft support, the bleeding will continue quietly. The reports will grow more polished. The tables will become more detailed. But the underlying imbalance will remain.
The numbers are speaking clearly. The issue is whether we are prepared to act on what SIGA’s own reports are telling us.
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Source: www.myjoyonline.com