General News of 2026-09-02
Bright Simons calls out SIGA over controversial GH¢19.8bn profit claim
Vice President of IMANI Africa, Bright Simons, has challenged the credibility of the State Interests and Governance Authority’s (SIGA) latest report on state-owned enterprises, accusing the authority of presenting inconsistent figures and drawing misleading conclusions about the financial performance of state-owned and state-controlled companies.
SIGA reported that the enterprises recorded a combined net profit after tax of GH¢19.80 billion in 2025, representing a major turnaround from the GH¢2.25 billion loss recorded in 2024.
However, Simons, in a post on X on August 31, disputed the picture presented by SIGA, describing several aspects of the report as containing “bizarre errors, misstatements, confusions, and flawed inferences”.
“The report as currently presented does not paint an accurate picture of affairs at state-controlled businesses in Ghana,” he said.
“In fact, some of the findings are pretty bizarre,” he added.
Simons questioned the reliability of SIGA’s historical financial data, arguing that figures for the same years have been presented differently across successive editions of the authority’s reports.
He cited the reported net loss for 2023, which he said appeared as GH¢2.573 billion in the 2023 report, GH¢7.144 billion in the 2024 report and GH¢6.824 billion in the 2025 report.
He also pointed to varying figures for the net loss recorded in 2022 and revenue for 2021.
Total liabilities for 2021, for instance, were reported as GH¢135.883 billion in the 2021 report, GH¢172.043 billion in the 2023 report and GH¢135.914 billion in the 2025 report, according to his analysis.
“These confusions make it really hard to make the comparisons across years that SIGA is trying to push us to do,” he said.
Simons also disputed SIGA’s portrayal of the 2025 figures as evidence of a fundamental improvement in the performance of state-owned enterprises.
He argued that when currency revaluation effects are excluded, net profit fell by 17.1% between 2024 and 2025, while operating profit declined by 22.7% and the operating margin narrowed by 3.5 percentage points.
He singled out the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), saying a sharp change in its foreign-exchange position accounted for much of the reported improvement.
According to his analysis, ECG moved from an exchange-rate loss of GH¢8.84 billion in 2024 to a gain of GH¢12.16 billion in 2025.
Simons said the resulting GH¢21 billion swing accounted for about 95% of the overall GH¢22.06 billion improvement in the sector’s reported profit.
He argued that excluding the currency effect would present a significantly weaker picture of ECG’s operations.
He said ECG’s operating result would move from a profit of about GH¢1.84 billion to a loss of GH¢14.25 billion, while operating cash flow shifted from a GH¢6.51 billion inflow to a GH¢12.54 billion outflow.
ECG also obtained GH¢20.44 billion in new financing during the period, according to his analysis.
Simons further questioned SIGA’s emphasis on the reported profits, pointing to the limited dividends generated for the state.
He said only about US$1.4 million in dividends was realised from 53 fully state-owned enterprises in 2025, representing a 45.5% decline from 2024.
“Celebrating ‘profits’ when dividends are crashing?” he asked.
He also challenged SIGA’s claim of a 976% improvement from a loss in 2024 to a profit in 2025, arguing that such a percentage comparison is misleading because percentage increases cannot meaningfully be applied when moving from a negative to a positive figure.
Simons further alleged that SIGA used an incorrect 2021 cost figure, overstating the amount by GH¢50.9 billion.
He said the report used GH¢104.97 billion instead of GH¢54.04 billion and suggested the higher figure may have been copied from a 2023 figure.
He argued that correcting the figure would significantly alter the efficiency trend presented in the report.
He also pointed to what he described
