Government is yet to disburse some GH¢305.27 million outstanding allocation to the Annual Budget Funding Amount for the first half of 2017.
According to the Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC), even though the ABFA received some GH¢358.41 million for the first half of the year, the government spent just GH¢53,136,951 or 15 percent of the amount.
The issues were disclosed as part of PIAC’s findings in its Semi Annual report for 2017.
The Annual Budget Funding Amount is the component of the oil revenue that is allocated for the Finance Ministry to be spent on some identified key priority areas.
For this year, government is seeking to spend the ABFA on five key areas.
They include agriculture; road, rail and other critical infrastructure; PIAC as well as physical infrastructure and services in both the health and education sectors.
But expenditure took a different turn as GH¢17,916,586 or 4 percent was spent on agric.
This involved the development of irrigation infrastructure, construction of Fisheries College in Anomabo, and counterpart funding for the Northern Rural Growth Programme.
Also, only 6 million cedis or 1.7 percent was spent on physical infrastructure and services in education.
Even though an additional 29 million cedis went into the Ghana Infrastructure Investment Fund, there was no further transfer to the road and railway sectors.
Meanwhile for the first six months of the year, no allocations were made to physical infrastructure and services in health and PIAC.
It is unclear what may have led to the under expenditure.
But PIAC wants the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori Atta to abide by the provisions of the Petroleum Revenue Management laws and update Parliament on the progress of the selected priority areas to ensure conformity with the law.
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By: Pius AmihereEduku/citibusinessnews.com/Ghana
