The Ghana Meteorological Agency (GMet) says it is facing a serious funding challenge as the Ghana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) allegedly withholds millions of cedis in statutory payments due the agency for weather services provided to the aviation sector.
The Director-General of GMet, Dr Asuman, said the situation was affecting the agency’s ability to maintain and upgrade critical equipment used to provide accurate weather information essential for the safety of aircraft, passengers and crew.
He said although GMet had continued to provide aeronautical meteorological services to the aviation sector, the GCAA had failed to fulfil its statutory obligations under the law governing the agency.
In an interview in Accra, Dr Asuman explained that GMet provided critical information to air traffic controllers and pilots on weather conditions, visibility, wind direction and speed, forecasts and other conditions required for safe take-offs, landings and flights through Ghana’s airspace.
He stressed that the services were essential to aviation safety, saying aircraft could not operate safely within the country’s airspace without the meteorological information provided by GMet.
Under the legal framework, he said, GMet was entitled to 10 per cent of landing charges, 10 per cent of en-route or fly-over charges and five per cent of airport passenger service charges.
Dr Asuman said the arrangement followed years of negotiations between GMet and the aviation authorities and was given legal backing in 2019 when Parliament unanimously passed an amendment to the GMet Act, which received presidential assent on September 27 that year.
However, he said the GCAA had continued to resist paying GMet’s statutory share, citing financial difficulties and competing investment obligations.
He said the accumulated arrears were still subject to reconciliation, with GMet’s own calculations putting the amount owed at about GH¢59 million, while the GCAA had estimated the figure at about GH¢22 million.
Dr Asuman said a meeting in March 2026 involving Parliament’s Committees on Communications and Transport, GMet, GCAA and other stakeholders agreed that the accounts should be reconciled and the arrears paid.
According to him, the GCAA subsequently proposed that the reconciled amount be paid in nine equal quarterly instalments.
The agreement, however, has not been implemented, he said.
Dr Asuman said the GCAA was also expected to instruct the International Air Transport Association (IATA) to make future payments directly to GMet under an arrangement that would allow IATA to automatically separate GMet’s statutory component from aviation charges collected on behalf of the industry.
He said while the Ghana Airports Company Limited (GACL) had eventually authorised IATA to make direct payments to GMet, the GCAA had failed to do the same.
“Every 30 minutes, we give them information. Every one hour, we give them information. Every significant weather event, we give it to them,” he said, stressing that GMet continued to provide the service despite the payment challenges.
Dr Asuman said the agency’s financial difficulties were particularly worrying because meteorological infrastructure was expensive to maintain and replace.
He cited weather radar systems, which could cost between US$2 million and US$3.5 million, and automatic weather stations, which cost about US$60,000 each.
He warned that inadequate funding could eventually affect GMet’s ability to maintain the infrastructure and provide timely and reliable weather information.
“When things go bad, everybody blames us. What we go through to get information to the level that we get, nobody cares,” he said.
The GMet Director-General rejected the argument that paying the statutory share would cripple the GCAA’s operations, saying the authority would still retain 90 per cent of the relevant revenue.
“If just 10 per cent will hit the organisation, then maybe there is a problem with your leadership and efficiency,” he said.
He said the matter had gone beyond negotiations, indicating that GMet had begun exploring legal options.
“We have gone beyond negotiations with Civil Aviation because we think we have done everything that we need to do,” he said.
Dr Asuman disclosed that GMet had written to the Attorney-General’s Office and was preparing to pursue the matter through the appropriate legal channels if the outstanding obligations were not honoured.
He said GMet’s demand was not an attempt to take money away from the aviation sector but to secure the sustainable financing Parliament had deliberately provided for the agency to perform a service critical to national safety.
He noted that other countries, including Nigeria and Zimbabwe, had established mechanisms for funding their meteorological institutions through aviation-related charges.
He therefore urged the aviation authorities to respect the law and honour the obligations due GMet.
BY CLIFF EKUFUL
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