The International Monetary Fund has found that boards of Ghana’s major state-owned enterprises remain dominated by political appointees, with board chairs frequently drawn from the ranks of ministers, Members of Parliament, and prominent party officials.
The finding appears in a technical assistance report titled Advancing SOE Fiscal Risks Management, Financial Oversight, Governance, and Investment Implementation, dated July 2026 and published on 9 September.
The Fund acknowledges that Ghana has built the formal architecture for merit-based selection while concluding that the architecture has not changed the practice. Its concern is fiscal rather than abstract, since boards that owe their positions to political patronage are unlikely to challenge management decisions that eventually land on the taxpayer.
What the framework promises
The State Ownership Policy requires government, acting through SIGA, to develop a Nomination Framework capable of identifying, vetting and shortlisting candidates for board and chief executive positions. That framework must also create a pool of potential directors and define due process for removals against Cabinet-approved benchmarks.
It further mandates corporate governance training for every new board member, with additional training driven by annual board evaluations. The IMF describes this design as broadly consistent with OECD guidelines, which hold that appointment processes should be transparent, structured and grounded in skills and experience rather than political loyalty.
Its verdict on delivery is blunter. The framework remains at an early stage of implementation, and “in practice appointments remain highly political and centralized in the Presidency.“
“In practice, boards of major SOEs are largely dominated by political appointees, with board chairs frequently being ministers, members of parliament, or prominent party officials.
“For example, GPHA’s newly inaugurated ten‑member board is chaired by the national chairman of the governing party, while the VRA board also includes prominent politicians alongside technocrats and a traditional leader.”
IMF Technical Assitance Report
Measured against OECD norms, which caution against active politicians serving on state enterprise boards and press for independent professional majorities, the IMF calls this a significant divergence.
The Fund recommends operationalising a genuinely merit-based and transparent appointment process, progressively reducing the number of active politicians on these boards and replacing them with independent professionals and sector experts.
Why governance carries a price tag
The report situates the criticism against the sector’s exposure. Aggregate SOE liabilities stood at roughly GH¢282 billion in 2024, about 25 percent of GDP, with the ten largest enterprises accounting for approximately 85 percent of the total.
The Electricity Company of Ghana alone carried about GH¢71 billion, equivalent to 6.0 percent of GDP, making it the single largest contributor to the sector’s debt. ECG, VRA and Ghana Cocoa Board emerge as the enterprises carrying the greatest fiscal risk.
The chain the Fund traces runs from the boardroom to the budget. State enterprises generate fiscal risk through government support, government-backed borrowing, arrears and quasi-fiscal activity, and when an enterprise accumulates losses heavy enough to require intervention, the cost transfers to the public.
Whether the people taking those decisions can be held independently accountable is therefore not a procedural question. The findings drew an immediate partisan response.
South Dayi MP Rockson-Nelson Dafeamekpor questioned the basis of what he considers selective criticism of National Democratic Congress administrations, telling the Fund’s country officers on X that he could produce “a full list of NPP Snr Ranks & MPs” who sat on state enterprise boards between 2017 and 2024, and again from 2001 to 2008.
His point carries some force on the historical record and none on the substance. The IMF’s criticism targets a practice both major parties have sustained across two decades, and the report’s remedy applies to whoever holds power.
What the report covers and what it does not
Readers weighing the findings should note the report’s vintage. Its assessment of SOE financial performance relies largely on data through 2024, which places it before President John Dramani Mahama’s second administration took office in January 2025.
The governance observations sit differently, since the GPHA board the Fund describes as newly inaugurated belongs to the current term. The document therefore blends a financial picture inherited from the previous administration with governance arrangements made under this one, a distinction worth holding as the political argument develops.
What neither administration has yet produced is the evidence the Fund is asking for, namely appointment decisions that can be defended on competence alone. Until the Nomination Framework moves from policy document to operating practice, the pattern the report describes has no reason to change.
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