John Darko
The New Patriotic Party (NPP) Member of Parliament for Suame, John Darko, has accused the government of making a calculated move to “plunder” the Ghana Heritage Fund and the Ghana Stabilisation Fund under the guise of the 2026 Budget, warning that the future economic security of the country is under grave threat.
Contributing to the budget debate in Parliament yesterday, Mr. Darko said the government, through the Minister for Finance, Dr. Cassiel Ato Forson, was attempting to change the investment structure of the Ghana Petroleum Funds in order to access and spend the resources now, in violation of established law and the principle of intergenerational equity.
He drew the attention of the House to paragraphs 861, 863 and 864 of the budget, which outline plans by the Finance Ministry to move investments of the Ghana Petroleum Funds from their current placement in low-risk foreign-denominated securities into alternative investments.
He noted that under the existing framework, the funds are invested in instruments issued by institutions such as the World Bank and highly rated sovereigns to protect Ghana’s long-term savings.
Mr. Darko said the Finance Minister’s claim that total reserves of about $1.46 billion had yielded just $1.94 million in interest since 2011, representing about one per cent annual return, was misleading and inconsistent with data from the Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC) and the Bank of Ghana.
Quoting the 2025 PIAC report, he said cumulative petroleum receipts distributed between August 2011 and June 2025 amounted to about $11 billion, with $2.6 billion paid into the Ghana Stabilisation Fund and $1.1 billion into the Ghana Heritage Fund, bringing the combined total to approximately $3.7 billion.
He described as troubling the attempt to downplay these figures in the budget presentation.
According to the Suame MP, the discrepancies in the data are linked to a memorandum laid before Parliament on November 12, 2025, by the Finance Minister, seeking to amend the investment rules to allow the petroleum funds to be channelled into domestic energy sector projects.
“This is effectively an attempt to spend the Ghana Wealth Fund now, instead of preserving it for the future as required by law,” he said, referencing the Petroleum Revenue Management Act, which mandates that both the Heritage and Stabilisation Funds be merged into a permanent wealth fund after Ghana’s petroleum resources are depleted.
Mr. Darko described the move as a violation of the principle of sustainable development, warning that the government was prioritising present consumption over the needs of future generations. “This budget is about ‘let’s eat now and forget tomorrow,” he charged.
Beyond the petroleum funds, the Suame MP also criticised the budget’s treatment of environmental sanitation.
He said the allocation of about GH¢400 million to waste management was grossly inadequate, considering the scale of Ghana’s sanitation challenges and the public health risks associated with poor waste disposal.
He cited research linking poor waste management to outbreaks of sanitation-related diseases such as cholera and warned that continued underinvestment could lead to serious public health emergencies. He also questioned why the sanitation levy had not been strictly ring-fenced for waste management purposes.
Mr. Darko called on Parliament and civil society organisations to resist any attempt to repurpose the Ghana Heritage Fund and Stabilisation Fund for short-term projects, insisting that the petroleum savings belong to both the present and future generations of Ghanaians.
He concluded that the 2026 Budget, as presented, fails to safeguard the long-term interests of the country and exposes critical national savings to unnecessary political risk.
By Ernest Kofi Adu, Parliament House