Isaac Adongo, the Ranking Member on the Finance Committee of Parliament, has criticised a directive by the President to allocate GH¢1.5 billion to those affected by the banking sector clean-up, labelling it as a political manoeuvre.
Adongo argues that a similar directive was given before the 2020 elections, but the funds were never disbursed.
In a conversation with journalists in Parliament in Accra on Wednesday, Adongo pointed out that this year’s budget does not include such a provision.
“In 2021 in the budget under other government obligations they budgeted for GH¢5.5billion to pay off those fund managers, people who were owing on those transactions, those Ndoum banks and all those people. Not even a dime was released.
“So how can you budget GH¢5.5billion a couple of years ago? You have not paid the debt. The debt is not accumulating any interest and this time you haven’t paid but the debt becomes GH¢1.5billion. Does it make sense? At the time you said GH¢5.5 billion it was 8 billion and you said at least we would pay them in tranches.
“So, let’s do GH¢5.5billion in 2021. 2022 it disappeared from the budget. 2023 it disappeared from the budget. 2024 it disappeared from the budget then suddenly a president who has brought a budget here and it has been approved without provision says that I will conjure some GH¢1.5 billion outside of the appropriation.”
“You know what they are going to do, they are going to call some people into the room and say how much is your debt GH¢3million? You take GH¢10,000. You know they did that before, they were giving people GH¢50,000, GH¢20,000. That is what they are going to do. You take this, we will give you some more later,” he stated.
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