Bawumia’s hidden GHc7bn claim intended to bait IMF – Adongo

A Member of Parliament’s Finance Committee, Isaac Adongo, has described as a sham claims of a hidden GHC 7 billion expenditure by the previous government, by vice president, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia.

According to him, the claims are nothing, but deliberate attempts to bait the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to soften its loan access mechanisms towards the NPP government.

Dr. Bawumia on Tuesday disclosed that the Akufo-Addo administration has discovered a whopping unaccounted GHc7 billion expenditure made by the previous administration.

According to him, the said expenses ranged from 2014 to 2016, and that it was detected as the new government prepares the 2017 budget which is expected to be presented in March.

“As we interrogated the data to see exactly why our public finances are in the state they are, we found that there is GH¢7 billion of expenditure that has not been disclosed,” Dr. Bawumia said at a forum in Accra organized by Krif Ghana Limited in collaboration with Action Chapel International and the US Embassy, asking: “Where have they [GHC7 billion] been hiding all these years?”

But speaking Thursday in an interview with Nii Arday Clegg on Morning Starr, Mr. Adongo said the vice president’s claim was a pretense to run to the IMF for loans.

“They want to use this as a strategy to get loans from the IMF,” he told Clegg, adding, it was also purely political not to fulfill the numerous promises made by president Akufo-Addo, during the electioneering.

The Minority in Parliament described as mischievous the claim by the Vice President Wednesday.

According to the minority, the said expenditure is accurately covered by data at the Finance ministry.

“What he said is trying to set aside what we wanted to achieve as a country. Most countries are going the way we are trying to go by way of keeping track and records of government expenditure. The money he claims are missing are sitting there in the books of the finance ministry. And so nothing is missing, what he said is mischievous and he should desist from it,” Cassiel Ato Forson, former deputy Finance Minister in the erstwhile Mahama administration said.