Alexander Afenyo-Markin
Majority Leader, Alexander Afenyo-Markin, has said the Minority in Parliament missed the point with the Strategic Mobilisation Ghana Limited (SML) and the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) deal.
Addressing the press during its ‘Putting Out The Facts’ series, in Accra, Mr. Afenyo-Markin said the minority is ‘misleading Ghanaians’ about the award of multi-year contracts by some government agencies.
The Minority Leader, Dr. Cassiel Ato Forson, in the past weeks have accused the government of breaching the Public Financial Management (PFM) Act by signing long-term contracts without getting Parliament’s approval first.
But Mr. Afenyo-Markin said the accusation of government agencies signing long-term contracts in contravention of the PFM Act is a deception and an attempt to make the government appear bad in the eyes of the people.
Mr. Afenyo-Markin said the contract under reference must be an international transaction, per the imperative of the Constitution, saying, “That is where our colleagues should pay attention to. It doesn’t mean that every contract with a multi-year value should come to Parliament.”
Citing an example of the GRA/SML deal, he said SML is a Ghanaian company registered in Ghana, adding that the minority’s demand that the contract should have come to Parliament because it is a multi-year contract was wrong.
“Our argument is that, it is wrong because if you read the Article 181 of the Constitution, it has sub-clauses that they need to pay attention to. Article 181 (5) talks about an international transaction so local contracts or MoUs or agreement of multi-year value cannot come under the Article 181 (5),” he stressed.
The Majority leader therefore cautioned the minority to stop misleading the public, “They should stop spreading falsehood,” he stressed.
“Every government engages the private sector. The object is to create space for economic growth. So if you recklessly scare the businessmen and where you know that what you are putting out is not true, what you are trying to do is to sabotage the economy,” the Majority Leader asserted.
A Daily Guide Report