Parliament to examine nation's foreign accounts

The Speaker of Parliament, Mr Peter Adjetey said the House would now have to examine the Foreign Accounts of the nation as the Constitution empowers it to do.

He said the Constitution enjoins Parliament to examine the nation's foreign accounts at least every six months and expressed regret that this had hitherto not been done perhaps because the legislature was not itself aware that it has such powers.

Mr Adjetey was giving the closing remarks at the end of a two-day induction seminar for 200 Members of Parliament the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), which was sponsored by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES).

He said as the Constitution stipulates that it is the Speaker, who has to close and open Parliament and that previous practice of the President opening the legislature was wrong.

President only delivers an address on the state of the nation and that address should not be referred to as "Sessional Address".

He said there was the need to equip all MPs intellectually to enable them to play their legislative roles effectively and examine public accounts with insight and dispatch.

Presenting a paper on "Budgetary process and public accounts and finance committees", Mr J. H. Mensah, the Majority Leader and Minister of Government Business, said the money that the executive allocates for expenditure in its budget does not belong to the government.

He said it was the taxpayers that generate revenue to finance government machinery and thus enabling the undertaking of projects on behalf of the citizenry.

Mr Mensah said: "The popular way of talking about public finance is to say government has provided six million for a hospital here or government cannot afford single-handedly to bear all the costs of university education.

"This gives the impression that the government of the day, somehow somewhere has its own financial resources with which it benevolently comes to the assistance of the citizens"

The Minister declared that this thinking was wrong and expressed regret that learned MPs and public servants also fall prey to the thinking.

He stressed that government has no other money anywhere and whatever money the government spends comes out from the pockets of the citizens or even if it is borrowed it is done on behalf of the people, who must repay it.

Mr Mensah, therefore, urged the MPs and the people to demand accountability from their governments.

He said an important way for Africa to consolidate its democratic practice was for the MPs and the people to relate to governments "not as supplicants and beneficiaries of the largesse of any President or Cabinet or party local official but naturally as the owners of every pessewa of the so-called government money.

"To perform efficiently in overseeing the operations of the executive and to control the common purse, Parliament needs to go behind the money veil and appraise the actual operations, purchases and contracts that lie behind the figures."