GOVERNMENT says it has spent $305.42 million out of the total of $430.00 million released by the World Bank for the country’s COVID-19 response.
Minster of Health, Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, who announced this at the Information Ministry’s ‘Meet the Press Series’ in Accra, said the amount was used in the procurement of items including vaccines and medication.
“Out of the amount, $147,483,170.16 was used for vaccine acquisition and $4,649,853.21 on medicines,” he said.
Mr. Agyeman-Manu further indicated that an amount of $37,588,199.99 was used for the procurement of PPEs; $53,063,564.98 for equipment; $9,867,339.79 for IPC Commodities; $2,539,379.51 for Sanitisers & paper towels; $87,731.770.0 for Vehicles and $8,735,273.78 for cleaning materials.
The refurbishment and Equipping of COVID-19 Treatment and Holding Centres cost $22,328,364.85, while $95,083.85 was spent on Consultancy (CDC) and $1,874,633.14 on Life insurance package. Also, $926,384.43 was spent on Transport/Storage while Transfers to Implementing Partners was $16,181,019.88.
The sector minister further noted that aside the expenditure funded by donor partners, the government also spent additional GHs 662,541,104.53 on the country’s COVID-19 response.
The expenditure included GHs114,450,350.00 on PPE, GHS32,663,280.00 on Medicines, GHs 484,102,490.90 on Infection, Prevention and Control Commodities and GHs31,324,983.63 on COVID-19 transfers to agencies, meetings and conferences.
Mr. Agyeman-Manu said COVID-19 greatly impacted the government’s finances which led to the Finance Minster going to Parliament to suspend the Fiscal Responsibility Act to allow him to overspend as no budget allocation had been made for COVID-19 response as at that time.
By Jamila Akweley Okertchiri