Vice President of IMANI Africa, Bright Simons, has challenged the State Interests and Governance Authority’s (SIGA) claim that Ghana’s state-owned enterprises (SOEs) recorded a combined net profit of GH¢19.8 billion in 2025.
According to Bright Simons, the reported improvement in profitability was largely influenced by currency revaluations, and does not reflect the underlying financial performance of the state-owned businesses.
He said when the effects of currency movements are excluded, the combined net profit of the SOEs actually declined from GH¢9.75 billion in 2024 to GH¢8.08 billion in 2025, representing a 17.1% drop.
“State-owned businesses’ underlying profitability declined in 2025. You heard that right. Contrary to what SIGA says, when you remove the currency effects, net profit fell 17.1 per cent, operating profit fell 22.7 per cent, and the operating margin narrowed by three and a half percentage points between 2024 and 2025,” he said.
His comments follow the release of SIGA’s 2025 State Ownership Report, which indicated a significant improvement in the financial performance of covered SOEs.
The report said total revenue generated by the SOEs increased by 28.12%, from GH¢137.64 billion in 2024 to GH¢176.43 billion in 2025.
It also reported a combined net profit of GH¢19.8 billion for 2025, compared with a net loss of GH¢2.26 billion recorded by the SOEs in 2024.
The figures suggested a substantial turnaround in the financial fortunes of state-owned enterprises within a year.
However, Bright Simons questioned the extent to which the reported profit represented an improvement in the operational performance of the SOEs.
In a post on X, he described the figures as “bizarre” and argued that currency revaluations had significantly affected the headline results.
He explained that while SIGA’s figures showed the SOEs moving from a combined loss of GH¢2.26 billion in 2024 to a profit of GH¢19.8 billion in 2025, the picture changes considerably when currency-related effects are removed.
“In simple terms: SIGA told us that a loss of GHS 2.26 billion in 2024 switched into a profit of GHS19.80 billion in 2025. But as everyone now knows, if you ignore the currency revaluations, profit actually fell from GHS9.75 billion to GHS8.08 billion, a decline of 17.1 per cent,” he said.
Bright Simons further argued that operating profit also declined by 22.7% over the period, while the operating margin narrowed by 3.5 percentage points.
His assessment therefore suggests that the strong improvement reflected in SIGA’s headline net profit figures may not necessarily translate into an improvement in the underlying operations of Ghana’s state-owned enterprises.