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Mensah Thompson, the executive director of the Alliance For Social Equity and Public Accountability (ASEPA), wants the government to apologise to Ghanaians for mismanaging the economy while blaming the COVID-19 epidemic for its effects.
“Of course, there’s no doubt about the impact of COVID-19 on the private sector as a lot of the COVID measures brought about major disruptions in production as workers were on lockdown, supply chains were disrupted and most importantly sales of non-essential commodities was on a nosedive, but for Government a non-profit entity who only cashed-in on COVID-19 revenues it didn’t expect to receive but for Covid, to advance the Covid effect as the excuse of its mismanagement and wasteful was not only deceitful but dangerous and the Government must apologize to the people of this Country,” Mensah Thompson wrote in a post.
The ASEPA leader maintained that Covid-19 on the economic front was nothing more than a government harvest in his response to the situation.
“Now here’s the catch, Covid-19 brought the government GH $10 billion additional revenue to support its annual budgets for 2020 and 2021, in the same period Government raised $1 billion annually from the Capital Market to support its budget, oil revenues also brought in additional $5.4 billion, not to mention proceeds from taxes like CST, ESLA, etc.
“How on earth were we given the impression that Covid-19 destroyed the Ghanaian economy when all it accomplished was to provide GoG with emergency funds?
A report on government spending during the COVID-19 epidemic spanning the period from March 2020 to June 2022 was published by the Auditor-General.
According to Section 16 of the Audit Service Act, 2000 (Act 584) for submission to Parliament, the special audit report has been created.
It included information on the numerous expenditures that Ministries, Departments, and Agencies made during the time period in question.
The Ministry of Finance mobilized a total of GH19,112,318,205.12 in 2020 to lessen the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to documents on COVID-19 funding at the Ministry of Finance, Controller and Accountant-General, and Ministry of Health, the report noted.
According to the data, GH 1,978,551,137.46 and GH 753,319,842.66 (up to June 2022) were raised to fund the Ghana COVID-19 Emergency Preparedness and Response Plan and the Coronavirus Alleviation Programme, respectively.
A total of GH21,844,189,185.24 was raised to help Ghana lessen the effects of the COVID-19 epidemic.
Source: Ghanatodayonline.com
