Between 2025 and 2030, the country needs about US$4.4 billion in new energy investment to reach its National Energy Compact target of 99% electricity access by 2030, up from roughly 89% today.

Of that, US$2.6 billion is expected to come from private capital, with the remaining US$1.8 billion from public and donor sources. The Multi-Year Tariff Order (MYTO) 2025–2030 that the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) is currently consulting on is not just a technical exercise but a major structural reform.

It is the central piece of financial architecture that will decide whether private capital shows up at scale or stays on the sidelines.

What the MYTO is trying to solve

The MYTO seeks to replace Ghana’s current pattern of frequent, often politically charged tariff adjustments with a five-year tariff path for electricity and water.

Utilities (ECG, VRA, GRIDCo, GWL and others) have submitted proposals covering their CAPEX, OPEX and other expenses for the period 2025–2030, and PURC is now holding nationwide hearings to test these assumptions with consumers, labour, and business groups.

The proposals on the table are dramatic. In some cases, utilities have requested triple-digit tariff increases. ECG, for example, is reported to be seeking around a 239% increase in its distribution service charge, while some analyses refer to requests across the chain that translate into overall increases of several hundred percent. To its credit, PURC has so far not simply validated these asks.

Recent quarterly reviews have delivered relatively modest tariff increases, single-digit percentage changes in electricity tariffs and in some quarters no changes in water tariffs while the bigger structural questions are being debated under the MYTO process.

In other words: MYTO is PURC’s attempt to move from short-term firefighting toward a structured, cost-reflective, multi- year regime that treats tariffs as part of a long-term development and investment strategy. Why this reform deserves real credit.

From an investor and policy perspective, PURC is doing several important things right:

a) Moving toward predictability

A multi-year order is exactly what long-term capital looks for. It allows utilities and IPPs to plan balance sheets and capex over a 5-year horizon instead of living quarter-to-quarter on tariff decisions that can shift with politics or FX shocks.

b) Opening the process to real stakeholders

The Commission has taken MYTO on the road, holding regional public hearings in Kumasi, Koforidua, Sunyani, Ho and other centres, bringing utilities, consumer groups, TUC, and civil society into the same room. This matters for legitimacy. A tariff path that will shape household bills, industrial competitiveness, and utility solvency for five years needs social buy-in, not just spreadsheet logic.

c) Speaking the language of transparency and cost recovery

PURC’s leadership has been consistently clear in public that the goal is a “resilient, transparent, and cost-effective utility framework” that balances consumer protection with financial sustainability for service providers. For a regulator that has in the past been accused of political capture or short-termism, this signaling is important. It sends a message to both domestic and international investors that Ghana recognises tariffs as a financial instrument, not just a political decision.

The benchmark: what sophisticated tariff regimes actually do

Without naming names, Ghana does not need to reinvent the wheel. There is a kind of framework global project finance lenders and infrastructure funds are comfortable underwriting.

In most mature regulatory environments, a robust multi-year tariff system tends to have a few defining features: Clear cost-of-service logic, Predictable adjustment mechanisms, Automatic formulas for pass-through of fuel, FX, and inflation, Clearly signaled review windows (e.g. annual minor adjustments, 5-year major reviews), Performance-based incentives, and Robust revenue collection and creditworthiness.

4. Where MYTO must go further

If Ghana is serious about mobilising US$2.6 billion in private capital for its 2025–2030 energy compact targets, MYTO cannot just be a new acronym for business-as-usual. The structural problems that have plagued the sector must be addressed within the regulatory design.

Revenue collection and sector creditworthiness

This is the elephant in the room. Even with “cost-reflective” tariffs on paper, utilities cannot pay IPPs or service their debt if actual cash receipt remains weak. Chronic collection problems, high commercial and technical losses, and mounting arrears have repeatedly undermined previous reform efforts in Ghana’s power sector.

For private capital, the key question is not “Is the tariff high enough?” but: “Is there a credible mechanism that turns that tariff into stable, bankable cash flows?” MYTO should therefore be explicitly linked to Loss-reduction milestones (technical and commercial), Collection-rate benchmarks for ECG and other distributors coupled with Ring-fencing and escrow structures that protect IPP and transmission cashflows from wider fiscal stress.

Without this, 5-year tariff paths will not materially change the perceived credit risk of the sector.

Treatment of legacy arrears

Ghana enters the MYTO period with a history of unpaid bills, legacy PPAs, and sector debt that has, at times, required quasi-fiscal interventions and donor-backed cleanup operations.

If these arrears are not dealt with transparently through securitisation, restructuring, or some form of “bad bank” mechanism, MYTO risks being weighed down by old obligations that crowd out new investment.

A credible tariff regime often goes hand-in-hand with a one-off balance sheet clean-up, so new capital knows it is not simply joining a queue of unpaid creditors or on the bottom of the debt stack

Calibrating tariff increases with social protection

Some utility proposals have requested extremely sharp increases (in some analyses up to hundreds of percent), triggering understandable pushback from labour groups, businesses and consumer advocates. For a regulator, this creates a dilemma: Move too slowly, and utilities remain insolvent, and power supply becomes unreliable. Move too fast, and you risk tariff shock, public anger, and political interference that unravels the reform.

The answer that sophisticated regulators have found is not to avoid cost recovery, but to pair it with targeted lifeline tariffs and social safety nets, gradual phasing-in of increases and clear communication of what consumers get in return (fewer outages, better service, long-term price stability).

MYTO will be judged not only by its revenue adequacy, but by how well it manages this social contract.

What investors will be watching for

For infrastructure funds, DFIs, IPPs and long-term lenders looking at Ghana between now and 2030, several questions will determine whether the sector is seen as investable:

• Is the MYTO methodology published, stable, and predictable?

• How are FX and fuel price risks handled? Through transparent formulas or ad-hoc political decisions?

• Are loss-reduction and collection improvements embedded as hard targets, with consequences for utilities that miss them?

• How are legacy arrears treated?

• Does the government backstop the regulator’s independence, or will the MYTO framework be reversed under pressure?

A positive answer to these questions would send a powerful signal that Ghana is ready to absorb the US$2.6 billion in private capital it is explicitly targeting for the 2025–2030 period.

Commendations with a clear challenge

PURC deserves real credit but if MYTO is to be more than a new label on an old problem, it must deliver three things simultaneously:

• Financial sustainability for utilities and IPPs

• Social legitimacy for households and businesses

• Regulatory predictability credible enough to anchor billions in long-term private capital

Achieving all three is hard. Yet without it, the numbers in Ghana’s National Energy Compact, US$4.4 billion in needed investment, 99% access by 2030 remain aspirations on paper rather than bankable reality. For investors, policymakers, and citizens alike, the MYTO debate is not just about tariffs.

It is about whether Ghana can finally align prices, policy and capital in a way that keeps the lights on, expands access, and attracts the scale of private investment the country says it wants.