The Senior Minister, Yaw Osafo-Marfo has disclosed that the erstwhile John Mahama administration was unable to access some grants and loans meant for development due to corruption and difficulties in sidestepping rules.
According to him, an exercise he personally supervised revealed that the former government was unable to use about 2.9 billion dollars given by donor countries and organizations for development.
Speaking at the closing ceremony of the National Policy Summit in Accra, Mr. Osafo-Marfo maintained that the Nana Addo administration will access all the funds for development.
“We looked into our books with our development partners as part of the budget and due diligence exercise, we found out that 2.9 billion US dollars of loans and grants given to Ghana are standing unutilized. I carried out that exercise myself with the help of the Minister of Finance,” he narrated.
He debunked the notion that Ghana has no resources for development stating that “it is not like we don’t have resources to run the system, it is the prudent way of doing certain things”.
Mr. Osafor-Marfo was of the view that the previous government left some of the resources locked up in their original accounts due to stringent procedures that required transparency.
“People did not use certain funds because the methodology of the utilization did not give them advantage. For instance if German government gives you a grant, you don’t buy anyhow, you still have to go international competitive tendering, and people are not interested. They rather preferred the commercial loans where they can do sole-sourcing,” he disclosed.
The Senior Minister assured that the Nana Addo government which is ready to go through the procedural means will access all the funds for national development.
“So we are now going to explore these resources. There will be more than enough resources to run the system and it will run efficiently. The goodwill Akufo-Addo’s government has is so up, a lot of our development partners want to assist Ghana.
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By: Lawrence Segbefia/citibusinessnews.com/Ghana
