The Public Interest and Accountability Committee has revealed that the Ministry of Finance has failed to account for as much as GH�307 million of monies from petroleum revenue earmarked for four priority areas.
This revelation was contained in PIAC�s report on Management of petroleum Revenues for the year 2012.
Section 21(4) and (5) of the Petroleum Revenue Management Act (Act 815) requires that the finance minister prioritizes not more than four areas for the purposes of expenditure of the Annual Budget Funding Amount. 70% of revenues, according to law, must be in the area of public investment.
The four priority areas and allocations indicated in the 2012 budget are as follows: GH�100 million was allocated to Expenditure and Amortization of loans for oil and gas; GH�232 million to Road and Infrastructure; GH� 72million to Agriculture modernization; and GH�112 million to capacity building.
However, according to PIAC, other sets of expenditure were purportedly made by the Ministry of Finance contrary to what had been approved by the Parliament of the Republic of Ghana.
According to PIAC, GH�65million was allocated to the office of Government Machinery, GH�5 million to Parliament and GH�15 million local government Ministry. Other allocations were GH�130 million to Ministry of Energy; GH�70 million to Ministry of Transport and GH�22 million to Ministry of Sports.
Further checks made by the New Statesman have revealed that a chunk of these �illegal� disbursements were made in the run up to the December 2012 elections, culminating in massive over-spending by John Dramani Mahama in his bid to become the President of the Republic of Ghana.
According to Chairman of PIAC, Major (Rtd) Daniel Ablorh-Quarcoo, they had since July 2013 requested the Ministry of Finance to answer and clarify the issues, but all to no avail.
�We asked a few questions and sent a request to the ministry to explain. We want to probe further and get to the bottom of this and find out where the monies were spent. Obviously because the funds are added to the consolidated fund, I think they used it to financing ordinary expenditure. In other words, they were not particular in making sure that the oil funds go in to do specific investment project. This is what the law requires,� he stated in a radio interview.
He added: �there is a complete disconnect. What is the office of government machinery which has been allocated GH�65 million doing? Where does it fit in the four areas that were specified? Expenditure on amortization of loan, do we classify that as part of the office of government machinery?�
�We need to know exactly how those funds were used. If the office of government machinery was funded to that level, they should come out and say so, because it defeats the objective of priority setting,� he added.
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