- Illegal Consumption Dominates Ghana Water Losses as PURC Demands Smarter Metering
Ghana Water Limited is losing almost half of the water it produces to illegal consumption, leakages and other unbilled uses, exposing a costly weakness in a supply system that is already producing substantially less water than the country requires.
The state utility produced about 219 million gallons a day against estimated national demand of 350 million gallons, leaving a daily production shortfall of roughly 131 million gallons, according to Managing Director and Chief Executive Adam Mutawakilu. Yet 47.60% of the water that Ghana Water manages to produce was classified as non-revenue water as of June 2026, meaning almost half did not translate into billed revenue.
At current production levels, the 47.60% rate implies that roughly 104.24 million gallons a day are outside the utility’s revenue system, although that does not mean all of this water physically disappears. Ghana Water says 78.00% of its unaccounted-for water is attributable to illegal consumption, with physical leakages accounting for the remaining 22.00%.
“The water is not lost. It is consumed by Ghanaians, but illegally,” Mr Mutawakilu said during an interview on Joy FM’s Super Morning Show on September 2. His distinction is important because it changes the economics of the challenge: much of the problem is not simply insufficient production but an inability to measure, bill and collect revenue for water already being consumed.
Applied to the company’s reported production and loss figures, illegal consumption could account for roughly 81.31 million gallons a day, while physical losses could represent around 22.93 million gallons. These are indicative calculations based on the figures disclosed by Ghana Water rather than separately reported production categories, but they illustrate the scale of the commercial opportunity hidden within the losses.
The Public Utilities Regulatory Commission is now pushing the utility to accelerate advanced metering as part of a broader attempt to tighten measurement, billing and enforcement. PURC Executive Secretary Dr Shafic Suleman said Ghana Water needed to remeter non-metered areas and introduce more sophisticated technology capable of helping the company “account for all water that the consumer uses”.
For Ghana Water, metering is increasingly a financial instrument rather than merely a technical one. Every gallon that is abstracted, treated and pumped through the distribution network carries costs for electricity, chemicals, labour and maintenance, whether the customer eventually pays for it or not.
When consumption cannot be accurately measured, or water is accessed illegally, the production cost remains with the utility while the corresponding revenue disappears. That weakens internally generated funds and reduces the company’s ability to replace pipelines, improve treatment systems and expand capacity.
The problem is particularly significant because Ghana Water is already operating below estimated national demand. Expanding production will be unavoidable if the 131 million-gallon daily supply deficit is to be addressed, but building additional treatment capacity without simultaneously reducing losses risks producing more water into an inefficient distribution and revenue system.
There has been measurable progress. Non-revenue water has declined from 52.20% in December 2024 to 51.60% in December 2025 and 47.60% by June 2026, an improvement of 4.60 percentage points from the end of 2024.
But the current level remains above the 45.00% regulatory benchmark recognised by the PURC. Dr Suleman said the tariff framework does not allow Ghana Water to recover indefinitely from consumers the financial consequences of operating above that benchmark, creating an incentive for management to reduce losses rather than rely solely on tariff adjustments.
The regulator has indicated that stronger performance could also carry rewards. If Ghana Water succeeds in driving non-revenue water below 40.00%, additional revenue could be retained to support further investment, effectively creating a mechanism through which efficiency improvements help finance future infrastructure.
That makes reducing losses potentially equivalent to creating additional productive capacity. Water recovered from leaks can return to the distribution system, while previously illegal or unmetered consumption that becomes properly billed can produce revenue without Ghana Water having to increase output by the same amount.
Smart metering could be central to the commercial side of that strategy. More advanced meters can improve consumption measurement, identify unusual patterns, flag possible tampering and provide better information for billing and network management.
But the technology cannot solve the problem on its own. Sophisticated meters connected to weak billing systems, poorly monitored networks or ineffective enforcement would merely digitise existing inefficiencies.
Ghana Water will therefore need to integrate metering with data analytics, inspections, billing and collections while prioritising areas with unusually high commercial losses. The objective should be to create a network in which consumption can increasingly be traced from production through distribution to the final customer.
Physical infrastructure remains the other half of the challenge. Mr Mutawakilu said some of the pipelines responsible for leakages date back to the 1960s, leaving sections of the network vulnerable after decades of service to a population and urban footprint considerably larger than those for which the systems were originally designed.
Ghana Water says it is replacing ageing pipelines, but the scale of the network means rehabilitation will require sustained capital expenditure rather than occasional interventions. Better asset-management data could help the company prioritise pipes where replacement offers the largest reduction in losses and maintenance expenditure.
The financial implications extend beyond Ghana Water itself. At a time when government is demanding stronger performance from state-owned enterprises, a utility unable to monetise almost half of what it produces represents both an operational problem and a potential fiscal vulnerability.
Higher tariffs cannot sustainably compensate for poor efficiency. Consumers who pay their bills should not indefinitely carry the cost of illegal connections, faulty meters and water lost through infrastructure that has exceeded its economic life.
At the same time, enforcement against illegal consumers must be accompanied by reliable service, accessible legal connections and accurate billing. A sustainable utility-consumer relationship depends on Ghana Water delivering measurable water consistently and customers paying fairly for the service they receive.
The strategic task is therefore broader than reducing one statistical indicator. Ghana needs additional production capacity, but it also needs stronger distribution infrastructure, advanced metering, effective enforcement, reliable billing systems and a financially disciplined water utility capable of reinvesting its revenues.
Ghana Water’s numbers expose the scale of that challenge. The country is short of about 131 million gallons of production each day, while an implied 104 million gallons of the water currently produced does not generate revenue under the reported non-revenue water rate.
That combination makes efficiency almost as important as expansion. Ghana Water must produce more, but it must simultaneously lose less and bill more effectively.
The meter may consequently become as important to Ghana’s water future as the treatment plant or pipeline. One determines how much water the country can produce; the other helps determine whether the utility can capture enough economic value from that water to finance the next generation of supply infrastructure.
