A Member of Parliament’s Finance Committee, Dr. Mark Assibey-Yeboah has alleged that government is currently broke five months to the general elections and is unable to honour its financial obligations.
According to him, government is currently struggling to release money to the District Assemblies Common Fund (DACF) Secretariat for onward disbursement to the various Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies.
Dr. Assibey-Yeboah who is also the New Patriotic Party (NPP)Member of Parliament for the New Juaben South constituency said he is privy to information that because the government has not released money to the DACF, cheques released by the secretariat for payment of services rendered are being rejected by the banks.
Speaking Citi News’ Richard Sky on Thursday, the MP insisted that government is indeed broke.
“I know for a fact that the Common Fund Secretariat has issued cheques to pay some of its suppliers, these cheques have bounced. As of yesterday and today, people have sent common fund cheques to the banks which have bounced because the government has not credited the accounts of the common fund secretariat.
TICO IPP [Independent Power Producer] got a loan from the International Finance Corporation and its supposed be making regular payments of the loan. Yesterday TICO defaulted and they are arguing that they defaulted because VRA owes them and VRA is also saying that government owes them so if we don’t take care the dumsor will be back again,” he noted.
The MP insisted that government’s inability to honour its obligations to the DACF, VRA among others “clearly shows that “it is broke because if you are not broke why are you not able to pay your debts?” He said if this was occurring in the beginning of the year, it was understandable but “it’s almost July, [so] technically…government has raked in tax revenues and revenues from oil and cocoa as well as all the major sources of government revenues have been trickling in but we are not seeing government making the necessary payments.”
He observed that this is because “a chunk of what they are getting is going into interest payments” of loans accessed by the government. “We are talking of about GHc11 billion going into interest payments, wages and salaries are also consuming the rest.
They have not been able to issue the Eurobond which would have brought in a billion dollars and lately they have not been able to raise enough funds from the local bond market so the government is really hot…so I can say without a shred of doubt that the government is indeed broke.”
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