Every month the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) publishes a short validation report on how the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) split the money it collected from customers. The split follows the Cash Waterfall Mechanism (CWM), a fixed order of payment that Ghana's Cabinet approved in its current form by a letter dated 20 May 2025, replacing a version adopted in August 2023. The reports are four or five pages long and give the revenue ECG declared, the amount set aside for each power producer and state company, and whether ECG paid it.
TEI parsed all nineteen reports from the January 2025 payment month to July 2026, the latest published, and rebuilt the waterfall line by line. Each month reconciles: Level A, the statutory deduction, Level B and any separate items add back to the revenue PURC reports. This piece compares the first seven payment months of 2026 with the same seven months of 2025. A payment month settles invoices from two months earlier, so the July 2026 report applies ECG's cash to May 2026 invoices.
How the waterfall is ordered
The first call on ECG's cash is Level A. In the 2026 reports it covers eight independent power producers (Karpower, Sunon Asogli, Cenpower, Aksa, Early Power, Amandi, Cenit and, in small amounts, the BXC and Meinergy solar plants) plus the West African Gas Pipeline Company (WAPCo). PURC describes these as fixed payments. They are set in US dollars and converted to cedis at a rate written into each month's model. After Level A comes a statutory payment, and the remainder goes to Level B: the Volta River Authority, Bui Power, the Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCo), gas suppliers, regulatory levies, a line labelled "Fuel Levy" and ECG's own share. Level B allocations vary with whatever cash is left.
In July 2026 ECG reported revenue of GH₵1,870.8 million. Level A took GH₵1,010.9 million, the statutory payment GH₵103.5 million, and the GH₵756.3 million left was divided among Level B. ECG kept GH₵370.0 million, the Fuel Levy line received GH₵151.6 million and VRA GH₵105.5 million. Level A's 54% share that month was its highest since April 2025.
How much more cash
Across the January–July payment months, ECG's declared revenue rose from GH₵9,398.9 million in 2025 to GH₵13,027.4 million in 2026, an increase of GH₵3,628.5 million or 38.6%. The monthly average went from GH₵1,343 million to GH₵1,861 million. In the twelve payment months to July 2026 ECG put GH₵20.83 billion through the waterfall, or GH₵1,736 million a month.
The government has used larger numbers. The 2026 Budget Statement said ECG's average monthly revenue rose from GH¢900 million in 2024 to GH¢1.7 billion in 2025 (paragraph 165), and that CWM declarations reached GH₵1.7 billion by August 2025 (paragraph 237). The PURC reports, which record the cash allocated in each payment month, average GH₵1,434 million across calendar 2025 and show GH₵1,367 million for the August 2025 payment month. Monthly declarations in the reports first passed GH₵1.7 billion in December 2025 and have stayed between GH₵1.67 billion and GH₵1.93 billion since. The two sets of figures may be measured on different bases. The reports do not explain the difference, and neither does the budget.
The improvement is also visible in what ECG paid. In January 2025, Level A was due GH₵729.0 million and received GH₵625.5 million, and the Ministry of Finance put in a separate GH₵243.8 million top-up that month. From February 2025 onward every report shows Level A paid in full, and no further top-ups appear. The April 2025 report adds that the ministry disbursed US$502.3 million to the sector between January and May 2025 outside the waterfall: US$194.2 million for liquid fuel, US$62.4 million to IPPs and US$245.7 million to gas suppliers and transport.
Where the extra GH₵3.6 billion went
TEI split the GH₵3,628.5 million increase across the waterfall lines. Level A took GH₵1,383.3 million of it, or 38.1%. The rest was spread unevenly through Level B.
- ECG's own retention: GH₵1,610.0 million to GH₵2,470.7 million, 23.7% of the increase.
- The Fuel Levy line: from nothing to GH₵777.1 million, 21.4%.
- VRA, all lines: GH₵548.7 million to GH₵984.5 million, 12.0%.
- GRIDCo: GH₵412.4 million to GH₵643.2 million, 6.4%.
- Statutory payment: GH₵545.5 million to GH₵775.6 million, 6.3%.
- Regulatory levies: GH₵212.5 million to GH₵251.7 million, 1.1%.
- Bui: GH₵520.1 million to GH₵515.1 million, slightly lower.
- Gas suppliers (Ghana Gas, Jubilee and TEN, OCTP): GH₵341.7 million to GH₵210.1 million.
- Embedded and other generators paid in Level B: GH₵49.6 million to GH₵3.5 million, as BXC and Meinergy moved into Level A.
ECG's own line in Level B was about GH₵45 million in each of the first two months of 2025. From July 2025 to March 2026 it ranged from GH₵230 million to GH₵379 million and was often set at exactly GH₵300.0 million. Since April 2026 it has been GH₵360–390 million, about a fifth of revenue.
The Fuel Levy line first appeared in the September 2025 payment month at GH₵38.8 million. It ran between GH₵33 million and GH₵78 million a month until April 2026 and has been GH₵150–160 million a month since May 2026. The PURC reports do not say what the line funds or who receives it. The budget refers to a fuel levy introduced in July 2025 (paragraph 92), but nothing in the CWM reports ties the two together, and TEI has not assumed they are the same. A separate Level A "fuel account", worth US$29.75 million across January–July 2025, last appears in the August 2025 payment month.
Gas suppliers received less through the waterfall in 2026 than in 2025. This does not by itself mean they were paid less overall, since the Ministry of Finance has been paying gas invoices directly, and the 2026 budget describes a payment plan to clear monthly gas invoices and restore drawn letters of credit (paragraph 241).
The dollar side
Level A is where the exchange rate does its work. Dividing each month's cedi amount by its dollar amount gives the rate used in the model. It was GH₵15.385 per dollar in every month from January to April 2025, dropped to 10.50 in May 2025 as the cedi strengthened, and has sat between 10.3 and 12.4 since. The January–July average was 13.09 in 2025 and 11.18 in 2026.
That move explains why the cedi and dollar growth rates differ so much. Level A rose 27.6% in cedis, from GH₵5,008.5 million to GH₵6,391.8 million, and 49.4% in dollars, from US$382.5 million to US$571.5 million. Excluding WAPCo and the 2025 fuel account, the IPPs alone received US$323.7 million in January–July 2025 and US$533.3 million in January–July 2026, an increase of 64.7%. Their share of ECG's declared revenue rose from 44.1% to 45.8%.
By producer, the January–July dollar payments changed as follows:
- Karpower: US$53.50 million to US$115.21 million.
- Sunon Asogli: US$52.00 million to US$113.78 million.
- Cenpower: US$71.00 million to US$111.25 million.
- Aksa: US$49.00 million to US$77.63 million.
- Early Power: US$35.25 million to US$54.55 million.
- WAPCo: US$28.98 million to US$38.19 million.
- Amandi: US$29.00 million to US$36.30 million.
- Cenit: US$34.00 million to US$23.05 million.
Under the 2023 mechanism, the early-2025 reports show Level A amounts in round dollar figures per producer, US$7 million a month for most and US$10 million for Cenpower, which look like fixed allocations. The 2026 amounts are irregular to the cent and track monthly invoices. The budget says the government concluded renegotiations with nine IPPs, securing more than US$250 million in debt discounts and lower capacity charges for some plants, and that all new IPP invoices are being settled on time (paragraphs 162–163 and 239). It also says US$300 million was paid to IPPs on the renegotiated agreements in 2025, with US$345 million programmed for 2026. Those legacy payments are separate from the current-invoice payments in the waterfall reports.
Tariffs moved one way, the generation charge the other
PURC raised end-user tariffs 14.75% from 1 May 2025. The residential rate for 0–300 kWh, the block most households fall in, was 175.8743 Ghana pesewas per kWh after that decision. The 2026–2030 Multi-Year Tariff Order, effective 1 January 2026, raised tariffs by an average 9.86% and set that block at 200.2159 pesewas. The April 2026 quarterly review cut it 1.66% to 196.8825 and the July review raised it 3.49% to 203.7509, where the 1 October 2026 tariff publication still has it. From May 2025 to October 2026 the rate rose 15.9%.
Over the same period PURC's Composite Bulk Generation Charge, the pass-through cost of generation it uses to set tariffs, moved down: from 140.2410 pesewas per kWh in the second quarter of 2025 to 125.7350 in the 2026 base, 118.8189 in the April 2026 review and 118.0280 for October 2026, a fall of 15.8%. In the April 2026 review, a projected 6.78% appreciation of the cedi on its own lowered the sector's revenue requirement by GH₵499.73 million. The July 2026 review assumed GH₵11.2228 to the dollar, a weighted average gas cost of US$7.9708 per MMBtu and a hydro share of 20.90%.
The difference between the household rate and the generation charge widened from 35.63 to 85.72 pesewas per kWh. That gap has to cover transmission and distribution charges, the cost of network losses and the levies. It also helps explain why ECG's Level B retention could rise while every Level A invoice was paid.
Against the regulator's revenue requirement
The 2026–2030 tariff order puts a number on how much ECG needs. PURC approved a Total Annual Revenue Requirement of GH₵34,383.58 million for ECG for 2026, of which GH₵29,564.45 million is power purchases, including losses, and transmission service. Divided by twelve, that is GH₵2,865.3 million a month in total and GH₵2,463.7 million for power and transmission.
The payment months from March to July 2026 settle invoices from January to May 2026, the first months under the new tariffs. ECG declared an average of GH₵1,892.5 million in those months. By TEI's calculation that is 66.0% of the monthly revenue requirement, and 76.8% of the power and transmission portion alone. The order assumes ECG buys 20,714 GWh in 2026 and loses 5,120 GWh of it in transmission and distribution, about a quarter, so the requirement already allows for losses at roughly that level. It does not allow for cash that is billed and never collected beyond the 2% the order provides for non-collectible revenue.
The comparison is rough. The revenue requirement is an annual figure in tariff terms, quarterly reviews since January have lowered the generation charge, and the CWM reports cover the cash ECG allocated in a month, which may include arrears collected late. Richard Gyan-Mensah, a Deputy Minister for Energy and Green Transition, said on 25 September 2026 that ECG was collecting about GH₵1.8 billion a month against a benchmark of about GH₵2.5 billion, and that the government now works with a requirement of about GH₵2.9 billion, according to ChannelOne News. Both figures are close to the ones TEI derived from the PURC documents.
The budget says Cabinet has approved private-sector participation in ECG to deal with billing and collection, with concession contracts expected by the third quarter of 2026 (paragraph 240). A finance ministry adviser has since told Graphic Online that participation would start by early 2027. The waterfall reports through July 2026 still show ECG as the collecting entity. The data in this note come from the PURC reports listed below and the calculation script data/ghana_cwm/calc_cwm.py; the August 2026 payment report had not been posted on PURC's site when TEI checked on 29 October.