By: Mabel Adorkor Annang
The Public Utilities Regulatory Commission, PURC has launched the first Ghana Utility Performance Index, GUPI in Accra.
The index which covers 2021 is a computed aggregated assessment of the performance of Ghana’s electricity and water utilities.
The Executive Secretary of PURC, Dr. Ishmael Ackah said the index would enable regulators to identify areas of focus for future auditing and monitoring activities, towards enhancing the performance of the utilities.
Dr. Ackah said the Index will help utilities to decide the direction of their investments towards improving service delivery.
The Ghana Utilities Performance Index, GUPI initiative is part of PURC’s regulatory efforts aimed at promoting a robust, competitive, and efficient electricity and water services sector.
GUPI builds on PURC’s existing utilities performance analysis through regulatory auditing, monitoring and evaluating techniques, examining overall performance of specific regional and operational areas of the utility providers.
The GUPI analysis, computes, and ranks the performance of all regional utilities against a scoring criterion developed in line with key regulatory indicators. The index has a set of 11 indicators for the electricity sector, and 12 indicators for the water sector.
The first edition assessed the performance of the Electricity Company of Ghana, ECG across its 7 operational regions and one strategic business unit, the Northern Electricity Distribution Company, NEDCo across its 5 operational areas, and for Ghana Water Company the assessment was done across its 13 operational regions.
The 2021 index showed that the utilities exhibited varied levels of performance across the different indicators, and along regional lines.
For the electricity sector, it was observed that regions that achieved the highest levels of performance had implemented and undertaken revenue mobilization drives, high fault maintenance regimes, and were cost efficient.
The GUPI will be published and made available for research and policy relevant studies that will help improve the sectors.
It is the expectation of PURC that the results would promote peer learning and efficiency among the utilities, with the objective of making consumers gain higher value for money.
