….No retooling since 1960; danger to air safety
The Ghana Meteorological Agency (GMet) has revealed that the Ghana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) owes it more than GH¢50 million in outstanding statutory payments, a situation GMet said is undermining its ability to sustain operations and meet some of its financial obligations.
The development has raised concerns about the financial and operational challenges facing GMet, a critical state institution responsible for providing weather information and forecasting services, including aviation meteorology.
Under the amended Ghana Meteorological Agency Act, 2019 (Act 1002), the GCAA is required to remit 10 percent of en-route, overflight, and landing fees to GMet, while the Ghana Airports Company Limited (GACL) is required to remit five percent of airport passenger taxes to the agency.
However, GMet said that the statutory payments due from the GCAA have not been fully remitted, despite several engagements, including ministerial interventions, aimed at resolving the matter.
Other independent sources have told The Herald that the situation has left GMet, a critical state institution, operating with equipment installed in the 1960s, a very dangerous development for aviation safety within Ghana’s airspace.
There are also claims that GMet relies on foreign donors to fund some aspects of its operations, despite statutory funding arrangements intended to provide the agency with sustainable resources.
The situation is said to predate the current Mahama administration, with the then Ministry of Communications, headed by Ursula Owusu-Ekuful under the Akufo-Addo administration, also pursuing the fund for the GMet but making no headway.
Several meetings were reportedly held between the Ministry of Communications, which exercised supervisory oversight over GMet, and the Ministry of Transport, which oversees civil aviation, in an attempt to secure the release of the outstanding funds, but without success.
The current Minister for Communications, Digital Technology and Innovations, Samuel Nartey George, and the Minister for Transport, Joseph Nikpe Bukari, are also said to have made interventions to resolve the matter, but without success.
Yesterday, Tuesday, August 18, the Director-General of GMet, Dr. Eric Asuman, told Citi News in an interview that a major challenge was the agency’s inability to access the GCAA’s flight database to independently determine and monitor the fees used to calculate its statutory share.
He said that repeated attempts by GMet to access the relevant flight data had not produced the desired results, making it difficult for the agency to independently verify the amounts due.
Dr Asuman explained that without access to the database, GMet could not effectively monitor flight movements or establish whether the statutory payments made by the GCAA accurately reflected the fees collected.
He described the matter as a longstanding challenge between the two institutions and called for a mechanism that would allow GMet to independently verify the data used to calculate its statutory entitlement.
“Somewhere in 2023, Ghana Airport Company started paying its share of its contribution to the Ghana Meteorological Agency as stated by the Act. And what they did was to request IATA, as an international air transport institution, to set GMet up in their system so that GMet’s share of the fund will be sent to GMet directly,” he said.
According to Dr Asuman, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) subsequently advised that the GCAA should provide an authorization letter to enable a similar arrangement for the authority’s contribution.
“But as we speak, since 2023 till now, that letter has not been sent. And when they also receive their funds, they don’t transmit the GMet component, which is 10% landing, 10% en route, as stipulated by law to GMet,” he added.
He said the failure to remit the funds had resulted in a prolonged dispute between the two agencies, eventually requiring the intervention of Parliament’s Select Committee.
“And it has been a serious challenge and a banter between the two institutions to the extent that the parliamentary select committee intervened on this matter. And so it is true. By law, they are supposed to give us this money, but they are not complying as stipulated by law,” Dr Asuman said.
GMet said an agreement was reached at a meeting in March 2026 for the GCAA to settle the outstanding arrears following the 2019 amendment to the law. However, the agency said the agreed payments had yet to be fully honoured.
Dr Asuman said the outstanding payments were putting additional financial pressure on GMet at a time when the agency needed increased resources to modernize its operations and strengthen weather forecasting, aviation meteorology, and other services critical to national development.
He stressed the need for the statutory funding mechanism to function effectively, arguing that GMet could only deliver reliable and timely meteorological services if it had access to the resources guaranteed to it by law.
Meanwhile, concerns have also been raised over the state of GMet’s infrastructure and equipment, with reports suggesting that some of the agency’s equipment dates back to the 1960s and requires significant modernization.
The agency has also reportedly relied on support from development partners and foreign donors to finance some aspects of its operations, despite the statutory funding arrangements intended to provide it with sustainable resources.
The controversy over unpaid statutory contributions, despite the Ghana Meteorological Agency Act, has resulted in inadequate funding for an institution whose services are critical to aviation safety, agriculture, disaster management, and the broader economy.
