The Ghana Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (GHEITI) says it is unsatisfied with the Finance Ministry’s claim that it has utilized the over GH¢600 million unspent allocated oil revenues from 2017 on COVID-19.
Co-Chair of the Ghana Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative, Dr. Steve Manteaw, speaking to Citi News at a Technical Workshop on the 2019 GHEITI report on Mining and Petroleum revenues, said the reason given by the ministry is not satisfactory.
“In fact, between 2017 and 2020, I personally campaigned against the Minster of Finance’s inability to fully account for petroleum revenues. Thus, the ABFA allocated to the Ministry. In 2017 the government told us that the money was there, and it was being kept in the treasury main account. In 2018 there was a further unutilized Annual Budget Funding Amount, in 2019 there was a further unutilized ABFA. I chased the ministry to account for all these monies and give us proof as to where the money is. The Ministry was unable to respond in ways that are satisfactory, only for the government to come back in the 2021 budget to give the indication that the unspent amount had been used to deal with COVID-19 issues and that they’ve been used to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on the economy. When did COVID-19 hit us? 2020. All this while in 2017, 2018, 2019, you are saying that the monies you could not account for have suddenly been found and used for COVID-19 mitigation?” he said.
Dr. Manteaw further said that if it is found that the Finance Minister truly utilized the allocated petroleum revenues to specific projects on COVID-19, it would amount to arbitrary expenditure in breach of the Petroleum Revenue Management Act.
“Even if we were to accept that explanation, further questions arise. They went through the Parliamentary processes and were approved by Parliament, so the Finance Minister cannot out of his own discretion use those monies without going back to Parliament. So then if it were even the case that the government has used those monies to take care of the impact of COVID-19, it still would have violated the law if he did so without recourse to Parliament”, he noted.
