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Finance Minister, Seth Tekper has braced himself this time to face NPP’s Vice Presidential candidate, Dr. Mahamadu Bawumia squarely to expose his persistent lies and misrepresentation of facts about Ghana’s economy.

Mr Tepker’s resolve is to provide verifiable facts to end his political mischief which seems to be the NPP campaign strategy as it struggles for a clear cut message to win votes.

The Finance Minister was responding to Dr. Bawumia’s assertion that government had directed about 250 million dollars of total proceeds from the $1billion Eurobond it issued in 2015 to a private bank and had turned around to borrow from that account at high interest rate at the expense of the tax payer.

Dr. Bawumia told a gathering of students at the Accra Polytechnic last Thursday that the diversion of the amount was for political gains.

But Seth Tekper, who was economical in the choice of adjectives to expose the diabolical agenda by NPP’s running mate said "Why is he advocating that we should continue keeping the money in the Central Bank for it to continue earning zero interest? Is that prudent?"

The Finance Minister who spoke on Accra based CITI FM’s breakfast show on Tuesday could not hide his disappointment in the utterances of Dr. Bawumia who incidentally is a former Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana.
He quoted Section 21 of the Financial Administration Act to back his argument. He noted that Dr. Bawumia was either exhibiting sheer ignorance or deliberately misled students of the Accra Polytechnic whom he addressed.

“What we are doing is by law and under the Ghana Infrastructure Investment Fund, something that the board of the GIIF has been empowered to do in addition to the powers of the Minister to invest public funds. In any event, the GIIF is a fund created and the Financial Administration Act makes a clear distinction between those funds and the core Central Bank money,” Mr Tekper argued further.

The Minister again said Dr. Bawumia as a Central Banker must know better and not limit himself to only the Banking Act in drawing his conclusions. He asked him to go back and look at what Mr. Tekper termed, “the full range of the law because the management of the economy is a complex one’.

In response to claims that government borrowed money from the Commercial Bank where the $250m was deposited at a higher interest rate amounting to financial loss, Mr Tekper asked …“under previous regimes, such monies were not invested and government earned zero. Is that Financial loss?”

He challenged Dr. Bawumia to compare that policy to the current situation where those funds have been moved in line with the existing law for the funds to earn interest, which has so far yielded 23million Cedis and concluded by asking which policy was more prudent.

“Does Dr. Bawumia want me to continue to keep the tax payers money in commercial banks for them to be using and earning interest or can I also invest part of that money and earn some interest because I am secluded from investing in the Treasury Bill which is what we want Parliament to reconsider. I can invest in other instruments as the law requires…And so if I invest and I earn 10percent or even 12%, are we not better off from zero? Why is he advocating we keep the money at the Central Bank to keep earning zero? Is that a prudent way of managing the economy?" he questioned.

He condemned Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia for peddling a “technically deficient” statement about proceeds from Ghana’s $1 billion Eurobond and challenged him to review his notes to come to terms with facts he had failed to research.

It may be recalled that in 2014, Parliament approved the sourcing for a Eurobond to finance infrastructure budget of Government and Dr. Bawumia appeared confused about the 2014 Eurobond and that of 2015.

The 2015 Eurobond of US$1,000.0 million is for refinancing of domestic debt purposes only. This amount was on the back of a World Bank guarantee (US$400 million). The guarantee and the amount was solely for refinancing of domestic debt. Nowhere in the prospectus or the policy statements of Government has the issue of budget financing been linked to it.

On Monday, the Finance Ministry issued a formal statement in response to the false claims and assured the public the funds are safe and being well managed.

The Ghana Infrastructure Investment Fund Act, 2014 (Act 877) established a Fund which is owned by the Republic of Ghana to mobilize, manage, coordinate and provide financial resources for investment in a diversified portfolio of infrastructure projects in Ghana for national development.

Section 5 of the Act provides for the sources of money for the Fund, which includes a portion of the Annual Budget Funding Amount (ABFA) from of the oil revenue; and moneys borrowed and raised from local and international capital market or from its affiliates. Further, as noted, a portion of the Bond proceeds was given as seed money to GIIF.

The statement explained that the Fund is mandated by Section 3 of the law to invest in, purchase, maintain and realize any investment of any kind. It among other things noted that GIIF has been set up as Sovereign Wealth Fund and it’s a Statutory Fund just like the District Assemblies Common Fund (DACF), Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) and the National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) and is by law operationally independent.