Ghana News Agency (Accra) – Dr Mark Assibey-Yeboah, chairman of the finance committee of Parliament, has said that calls on the Minister of Finance to account for the monies approved by Parliament to fight COVID-19 during the mid-year Budget review are wrong.
He said that at the end of each year, all of the country’s expenditures are submitted to the Auditor General, after which he submits audited accounts back to Parliament.
Dr Assibey-Yeboah was speaking in Parliament in the lead-up to the presentation of the mid-year Budget review by the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, today, Thursday 23 July 2020.
“How can the minister who has been given money come to the House to say, I am accounting for this? … It is for the Auditor General to vet the accounts and submit a report to the House,” he said.
Dr Assibey-Yeboah also said that the Minister was expected to apprise the legislature of how the government intended to realign its expenditure, the public debt stock, the financing cover for and revision of a targeted 6.8% growth in gross domestic product and exchange rate depreciation. All of these would be difficult to achieve, he noted, because of the pandemic.
Update on shortfalls
In today’s mid-year Budget review, the Minister for Finance is expected to inform Parliament of Ghana’s macroeconomic performance in the first six months of 2020. He will also update the House with the full-year numbers for 2019, including government revenue and expenditure.
The mid-year review is one of the duties required of the Finance Minister as spelled out under Section 28 of the Public Financial Management (PFM) Act.
Dr Assibey-Yeboah also said that the minister was likely to inform the House about any shortfalls in revenue in addition to the GHC9.5 billion funding gap already identified in the Budget. He will also offer end-of-year projections for December 2020.
He said the government had used GHC20 billion for the banking sector clean-up, which he recognised would add to the government’s debt stock but not part of the deficit.
A post-independence history of deficit financing
The MP for Kumbungu, Ras Mubarak, described as outrageous a comment by Dr Assibey-Yeboah to the effect that Ghana has run a deficit budget every year in its modern history and was not expecting the practice to go away any time soon.
He criticised the government for not being prudent in managing the economy and faulting the government for spending more than it earns.
“We must accept that we are spending more than we earn in revenue and the deficit is happening because we are not prudently raising more than we are spending,” he said.
Mubarak said the Finance Minister having asked Parliament to approve a COVID-19 fund as one condition to allow him to take money from the Contingency Fund, it was for him to report back to Parliament how he intended to repay that money.
He said MPs expected that, “Even if he comes back to tell Parliament that the gap has increased, what has been given him, how does he anticipate to spend that?”
A CAP on a crisis
On 8 April 2020, Ken Ofori-Atta presented the government’s Coronavirus Alleviation Programme (CAP to the finance committee of Parliament). At that time, he said that the government was going to spend GHC1.2 billion to cushion Ghanaians against the socio-economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic.
The breakdown of the GHC1.2 billion included an allocation of GHC40 million for provision of emergency food packages and hot meals, as well as GHC40 million for the Ghana Buffer Stock Company to provide dry foodstuffs to support vulnerable communities in lockdown areas.
A further GHC200 million was allocated for provision of water and sanitation, including the mobilisation of all publicly and privately owned water tankers to ensure the supply of water to all vulnerable communities.
All three allocations amounted GHC280.3 million.
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