Withdrawal of GH¢77m from Contingency Vote for Black Stars, others: Finance ministry replies Ablakwa

The Ministry of Finance has reacted to an allegation by the Member of Parliament (MP) for North Tongu, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, that the sector’s minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, took about GH¢77 million from the Contingency Vote for expenditure on football without the approval of parliament in 2023.

In a statement sighted by GhanaWeb, even though the ministry did not deny that the said amount of money was taken from the Contingency Vote as asserted by the MP, it indicated that there is nothing wrong with it.

The ministry explained that Ofori-Atta did not require the approval of parliament to take money from the Contingency Vote and denied the assertion that the vote was an illegal creation of the minister.

It explained that the ‘Contingency Vote’ is different from the ‘Contingency Fund’ with the former requiring the authorisation of parliament before it can be accessed.

“It is incorrect to state that the Contingency Vote was illegally created by Hon. Ken Ofori-Atta in 2023. The Contingency Vote is always part of the Appropriation Bill which Parliament passes annually to support execution of national Budgets and therefore does not require the Ministry to go back for approval from Parliament to access it. This Vote enables government to meet critical expenditure challenges which arise during budget implementation but are not covered by the approved and appropriated budget of Ministries, Departments and Agencies.

“However, there is also a Contingency Fund which is the creation of Article 177 of the 1992 Constitution and reiterated by Section 36 of the PFM Act (2016) Act 921. This Contingency Fund is set up with the approval of Parliament to enable the State cover urgent and unforeseen expenditure for which no allocation exists in the Annual Appropriation. A recent occasion during which this legislative provision was utilized was the Covid-19 Pandemic,” part of the statement reads.

The ministry added, “Hence, there is a clear distinction between the Contingency Vote and the Contingency Fund. For the avoidance of doubt and the education of the public, the Contingency Vote, unlike the Contingency Fund, does not require going back to Parliament for approval whenever there is need to access it”.

Watch Ablakwa said:

The North Tongu legislator said that parliamentary documents show that the Minister for Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta, took about GH¢77 million from the Contingency Vote for expenditure on football without the approval of parliament in 2023.

According to Ablakwa, over GH¢27 of the money taken from the Contingency Vote was used on Ghana’s senior national male football team, the Black Stars, for the 2023 World Cup qualifiers and the transportation of supporters to Qatar.

The MP, who made these disclosures in an interview on Okay FM on Tuesday, January 30, 2024, added that parliament came to know of these expenditures after it queried the Minister of Sports, Mustapha Ussif.

“We raised issues about how the government was spending so much, particularly on football, out of the approved funds. So, we queried the ministry.

“If you read the sports committee report, you would see that we discovered that they had gone to take GH¢77 million from the Contingency Vote – the illegal vote created by Ken Ofori-Atta – in the year 2023 without the approval of parliament. They only came to account later,” he said in Twi.

Ablakwa added, “It is the sports minister and finance ministry who collaborated to do that. It is out of that money that just for our qualifiers and lifting fans from the Qatar World Cup, we spent GH¢27.9 million”.

View the ministry's statement plus a video of the MP’s remarks below:

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