The Vice President of IMANI Africa, Bright Simons has described as inaccurate, the content of the State Ownership Report issued by the State Interests and Governance Authority (SIGA).
In a post on X on August 31, Mr Simons alleged that some of the findings in the report are bizzare.
“The report as currently presented does not paint an accurate picture of affairs at state-controlled businesses in Ghana. It is replete with bizarre errors, misstatements, confusions, and flawed inferences. Especially when read against previous SIGA reports,” he wrote.
“For example, the net loss for 2023 has been published in 3 different ways: GHS 2,573.2 million in the 2023 report, GHS 7,143.5 million in the 2024 report, and GHS 6,823.55 million in the 2025 report,” Mr. Simons cited.
“In fact, some of the findings are pretty bizarre,” he stressed.
SIGA’s report had stated earlier that Ghana’s State-Owned Enterprise (SOE) sector recorded a significant financial turnaround in 2025, with total revenue across the SOE sector increasing by 28.12% to GH¢176.43 billion, up from GH¢137.64 billion in 2024.
According to the report, SOEs broke a four-year cycle of consolidated net losses, posting a GH¢19.80 billion net profit after tax, compared with a GH¢2.25 billion net loss recorded in 2024.
The growth in the sector was driven largely by the agricultural, manufacturing and infrastructure subsectors, which recorded revenue increases of 203.71%, 114.74% and 92.24%, respectively.
The improved revenue performance also translated into stronger operating results, with Profit Before Interest and Tax (PBIT) rising to GH¢25.49 billion in 2025.
This represents a continued recovery from the sector’s GH¢502 million loss in 2023 and a partial rebound to GH¢5.80 billion in 2024.
Ten SOEs, including the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority, Bui Power Authority, Ghana National Gas Company, BOST Energies Company, Minerals Income Investment Fund and TDC Company Ltd, maintained profitability throughout the five-year period under review.
The report also highlighted the impact of the stronger Ghana cedi on the financial performance of state-owned enterprises.
SOEs recorded net foreign exchange earnings of GH¢11.72 billion in 2025, a significant reversal from the GH¢12.01 billion foreign exchange loss recorded in 2024.
Finance costs also declined by 42.49% during the period.
Despite the improved profitability, however, the overall balance sheet of the SOE sector contracted modestly.
The report says total assets fell by 5.86% to GH¢407.84 billion, with the decline largely attributed to the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), Volta River Authority and COCOBOD.
Total liabilities also declined by 4.31% to GH¢281.99 billion, with ECG alone accounting for GH¢82.31 billion of the liabilities.
PLEASE READ BRIGHT SIMONS POST BELOW:
1. We were all there when SIGA, an agency that regulates state-owned or controlled businesses and parastatals, came and told us that state-controlled businesses have made incredible profits in 2025.
2. This was presented as a massive turnaround after years of losses.
3. Someone seemed to have forgotten that Ghana still has nerdy policy analysts who spend their lunch time poring over figures.
4. With the help of Tabula and Excel Power Query, we have taken the SIGA report to task.
5. Unfortunately, it simply doesn’t hold up.
6. In fact, some of the findings are pretty bizarre.
7. The report as currently presented does not paint an accurate picture of affairs at state-controlled businesses in Ghana. It is replete with bizarre errors, misstatements, confusions, and flawed inferences. Especially when read against previous SIGA reports.
8. For example, the net loss for 2023 has been published in 3 different ways: GHS 2,573.2 million in the 2023 report, GHS 7,143.5 million in the 2024 report, and GHS 6,823.55 million in the 2025 report.
9. The net loss for 2022 has been published in 4 different ways. Revenue for 2021 has been published in 5 different five ways.
10. Total liabilities for 2021 appear as GHS135,883 million in the 2021 report, GHS172,043 million in the 2023 report, and GHS135,914 million in the 2025 report, a GHS36 billion excursion that appears and then vanishes.
11. These confusions make it really hard to make the comparisons across years that SIGA is trying to push us to do.
12. But when we do, we are forced to different, highly unflattering, conclusions. As follows.
13. State-owned businesses’ underlying profitability declined in 2025. You heard that right. Contrary to what SIGA says, when you remove the currency effects (which as analyst @CallmeAlfredo stresses must be done for safe comparisons), net profit fell 17.1 per cent, operating profit fell 22.7 per cent, and the operating margin narrowed by three and a half percentage points between 2024 and 2025.
14. Basically, ECG went from exchange rate losses of GHS 8,837.71 million in 2024 to a gain of GHS 12,157.79 million in 2025. That swing: GHS20,995.50 million, is 95.2 per cent of the entire profit swing of GHS22,058.91 million that SIGA is celebrating.
15. Take exchange rate revaluations out and ECG’s operating result goes from a profit of GHS1.84 billion to a loss of GHS14.25 billion. Its operating cash flow moved from an inflow of GHS6.51 billion to an outflow of GHS12.54 billion, a swing of GHS19.05 billion in the wrong direction, while the company took in GHS20.44 billion of new financing to stay afloat.
16. Only $1.4 million in dividends were realised from the 53 fully state-owned enterprises in 2025. The dividend tally actually fell by 45.5% in 2025, compared to 2024. Celebrating “profits” when dividends are crashing?
17. Moreover, the celebrated turnaround is being measured against a baseline that was reduced by three-quarters between editions, using a ratio whose definition changed at the same time. Neither adjustment was disclosed.
18. In simple terms: SIGA told us that a loss of GHS 2.26 billion in 2024 switched into a profit of GHS19.80 billion in 2025. But as everyone now knows, if you ignore the currency revaluations, profit actually fell from GHS9.75 billion to GHS8.08 billion, a decline of 17.1 per cent.
19. (By the way, the “976%” improvement from 2024 to 2025 that has been reported is totally meaningless. One can’t use a percentage incremental when swinging from below zero – negative – to positive).
20. SIGA’s published cost figure for 2021 is wrong by GHS 50.9 billion. Instead of GHS 54.04 billion, GHS 104.97 billion is used. The wrong number is replicated from the 2023 figure. This crazy error is presented as evidence that State companies are becoming more efficient at covering their costs. The published series thus climbs from 0.54 in 2021 to 1.17 in 2025 to underline the success story. If corrected, 2021 was already 1.04. Most of the “improvement” is from a pure mistake.
21. (The craziest thing is that this is not a one-off. In all five SIGA reports from 2021 to 2025, the earliest year’s cost figure is an exact copy of the figure two years later in the same table. And it is not confined to that table: the 2025 report duplicates cells in its mining chapter and its joint-venture chapter too, at different intervals. These are not typos. Something messed up seems to be going on.)
22. The other strange thing is how SIGA fails to explain how equity dropped by a whopping GHS 12.69 billion in 2025 creating an inexplicable GHS 32.49 billion gap from the profit line. Even as net worth has been reported as rising for the three previous years of losses. So somehow the net worth of the businesses that has been rising during the years of losses suddenly drops when humongous profits show up?
23. Another bizarre issue is that the 2024 report says State businesses lost GHS 9,675.43 million that year and reported a return on equity of minus 8.5 per cent. The 2025 report says the loss in 2024 was GHS 2,259.15 million. GHS 7.42 billion of losses disappeared like smoke. With zero explanation.
24. Apart from the currency revaluations, SIGA also booked GHS 4,128.08 million as profits from GETFund. That money is simply the portion of the levy (a kind of tax) Ghanaians pay that GETFund hadn’t got around to spending yet by the end of the year (more likely, it wasn’t released to them.)
25. As for the entities in which Ghana owns a tiny stake (like 0.04% in Anglogold), it is comical how their total profits were reported as if they can be attributed to Ghana.
In short, SIGA should withdraw, not just the confusing the 2025 one, but all its reports from 2020, fix the errors, and submit a more reliable series.
