Ken Ofori Atta
Government has hinted that it’s working hard to discontinue its extended credit facility (ECF) programme with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) possibly by the end of this year.
Ken Ofori Atta, Minister of Finance, who disclosed this to financial journalists Monday in Accra, emphasised: “That’s a commitment by the Presidency. I know we have some two prior actions, we need about 5 or so structural reforms to be able to do the April 9 board meeting. We are committed to doing that and we will do that.”
He was briefing them on the macro and fiscal developments in Ghana’s economy and progress with the implementation of the 2018 budget.
The Finance Minister expressed government’s intention to support Small and Medium-scale Enterprises (SMEs), stressing that government expect the numerous resources it has invested into the planting for food and jobs programmes and the IPEG programme to create support for SMEs of the ‘One district, One factory’ initiative and lead to promoting the non-oil sector.
According to him, the Finance Ministry was working hard to also resolve challenges with the payment of arrears to contractors to stay clear of fraudulent claims.
Mr Ofori Atta said that his outfit needed to check issues of payments and releases to guarantee that government contracts were awarded and managed in an orderly manner.
He said the over-pricing of contracts in the past made it difficult to approve and release funds without due diligence.
“The arrears situation we inherited is something that should not have happened in the first place but they have happened and as recently as a few weeks ago the auditor general came out to validate about 57 percent of the amount. One has to be really careful about payments and releases,” he stated.
He said even though that might create collateral damage for contractors, who might have legitimate claims, the Ministry has a strategy to offset at least 20 percent of the validated claims.
“The Roads Minster has also gone through his validation and will bring these up to us,” he said, adding that the Ministry will have re-assessments every quarter to see if any extra payments could be made.
Commenting on monies government had injected into its flagship programmes, he said GH¢91.5 million had been released to support the construction of factories under what he termed “Industrialising Ghana from the ground up,” as part of the One-district, One-factory (1D1F) initiative.
Also he said GH¢2.5 million had been released for the free senior high school (SHS) programme while GH¢105 million had been invested in the ‘Planting for Food and Jobs’ programme.
GH¢126 million has also been released for the national identification (ID) programme, he said, adding that GH¢400 has been released under the Infrastructure for Poverty Eradication Programme (IPEP); GH¢100 million for the Ghana National School Feeding Programme and another GH¢100 million for the Scholarship Secretariat.
BY Samuel Boadi