Executive Director of Green Tax Youth Advocacy Benaiah Nii Addo, is calling on the government to address the root causes of inefficiencies in Ghana’s energy sector, rather than imposing additional taxes on already-struggling citizens.
Reacting to the recently proposed GH₵1 levy per litre of petroleum products, Nii Addo described the measure as a regressive tax that unfairly shifts the cost of policy failures onto the public.
He argued that successive governments have consistently failed to plug revenue leakages or implement lasting reforms in the energy sector.
“This policy is not new. It reflects a cyclical and lazy fiscal approach where the government resorts to low-hanging revenue options like fuel taxes without addressing the structural rot in the power sector,” he said.
Nii Addo noted that previous levies such as the Energy Sector Recovery Levy and the Sanitation and Pollution Levy were intended to reduce debt and stabilize payments to Independent Power Producers (IPPs), but have failed to yield the desired results.
He also pointed to other interventions, including the IMF’s $3 billion bailout, utility tariff hikes, the Cash Waterfall Mechanism, and revised Power Purchase Agreements, which have done little to improve power reliability or reduce the sector’s mounting debt.
“Despite all these measures, electricity supply remains unreliable. Households face rising prepaid tariffs, while businesses are forced to rely on costly diesel generators due to frequent power outages,” he said.
According to him, the new GH₵1 fuel levy will only deepen public frustration without fixing the sector’s cash and management crises.
Nii Addo warned that the continuous reliance on taxation rather than reform exacerbates inequality, particularly affecting youth, women, and vulnerable communities.
“Over the last five years, governments have pushed tax-heavy economic policies and international bailouts as solutions. But these have merely served as smokescreens, failing to solve the core challenges, while making life harder for ordinary Ghanaians,” he said.
He also cautioned against politicizing the energy crisis, stating that both the current government and the opposition bear responsibility.
“The opposition must not pretend to care now when they also contributed to the mess—through poorly negotiated ‘take-or-pay’ agreements and rising debts to IPPs. Their legacy still haunts us,” he added.
To ensure accountability and reform, Nii Addo called for:
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Public traceability of all energy sector expenditures
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Civic consultations before new taxes are introduced
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A shift toward transparent, equitable, and inclusive policies
“What Ghana needs is not more levies, but genuine reform. Anything less is a betrayal of the public trust—especially for the youth and future generations who will inherit these failures,” he concluded.