Parliament has approved approximately US$750 million for the financing of various projects being executed by government.
The credit facilities include $60 million from the International Development Association (IDA) of the World Bank Group million as a Third Additional Financing for the Ghana COVID-19 Emergency Preparedness Response Project.
Others are US$150 million to finance the West Africa Foo System Resilience Programme Phase 2 under the Multi-Phas Programmatic Approach; US$150 million to finance the Primary Healthcare Investment Project; US$150 million to finance the public financial management for service delivery programme and US$200 million to finance the Ghana Digital Acceleration.
The rest are €170,000,000.00 from the Development Bank Ghana (DBG) for the establishment of the Development Bank of Ghana (DBG); US$30,000,000.00 from the Export-Import Bank of Korea to finance the Medical Equipment Provision.
Chairman of the Finance Committee, Mr. Kweku Kwarteng, who presented the Committee reports on the various loans to the House indicated that in view of the enormous benefits to be derived from the projects and their capacity to address pressing challenges and vulnerabilities in the sectors the projects are intended for, the Committee by majority decision recommended to the House to adopt the reports and approve the loans.
Deputy Minister for Finance, Dr. John Kumah, explained during an interview afterwards that the loans are not new facilities but are already on the books of the government and only require Parliamentary approval, which was not done before the House rose sine die.
“So we just want to put on record that government is not taking new facilities. These are loans we have already contracted and all required Parliamentary approval. So that is what we want to put on record.”
The Deputy Minister assured that the approval will help government quest to have the country recover from the economic crisis.
Minority leader, Dr. Cassiel Ato Forson, however, argued that at a time the country is in dire distress, it is very wrong for the government to still consider and to even have the courage to add on the public debt.
The Minority National Democratic Congress (NDC), he said, was vehemently opposed to the approval of the loan facilities that amounted to about $750 million.
According to him, the Majority NPP thought this is the right time to ambush the NDC and bring the loans to the House for approval at a time that the NDC members of Parliament are preparing for their primaries and are heavily campaigning.
“They thought this is the best time to bring the loans and obviously they brought them and succeeded in passing them. We opposed that.
“But we are calling on the people of Ghana to hold this government accountable. The opposition, all this time has been doing what we can with the numbers that were given to us by the electorates. But often times impressions are created as if it is only the opposition that should gold this government accountable.”
The Minority leader appealed to civil society organizations and well-meaning Ghanaians to join them in opposing the government vehemently because the Akufo-Addo administration is a government that will never learn.
