The Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC), has said it is unable to report on the programmes and activities undertaken with an amount of $169.51 million disbursed to the Annual Budget Funding Amount (ABFA) for Q1 2020.
In its 2020 semi-annual report, the PIAC notes that it was also unable to provide an update on the status of unutilised and unaccounted for ABFA funds, which stood at Ghs 1.5 billion.
For this reason, Noble Wadzah, chairman of PIAC, repeated his earlier call on Parliament to strengthen the committee’s oversight mandate on the Ministry of Finance.
“This is because the ministry’s persistent failure (fourth time) to provide half-year data on ABFA utilisation is not only adversely affecting the work of the committee, but is also eroding gains in the fight for transparency and accountability in the management and use of Ghana’s petroleum revenues for the benefit of citizens,” the chairman said in the report.
The ABFA is the portion of petroleum revenue used to support government’s budget.
The report also disclosed that the cumulative indebtedness to Ghana National Gas Company (GNGC) continued to increase to $942.26 million.
This, the report said, is as a result of the failure of GNGC’s customers to honour their obligations.
The Ghana Petroleum Fund reserves, according to the report, recorded a 24.1 percent reduction at the end of June 2020 compared with the same period of 2019.
This was as a result of the lowered cap and subsequent withdrawals from the Ghana Stabilisation Fund (GSF).
“Consequently, the GSF yield reduced by 68.08 percent from that of the same period of 2019,” it added.
During the first half of 2020, cumulative raw gas production increased significantly by 65 percent, the highest recorded half-year volume of gas produced since 2010.
Total petroleum receipts in the Petroleum Holding Fund (PHF) in the same period stood at $322.57 million indicating a decline of 11.32 percent from a year ago.
According to PIAC, GNGC received $1.78 million under the Cash Waterfall Mechanism in order to address its indebtedness to the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) for gas supplied. However, the committee said there was no payment made to GNPC.
Consistently, the non-payment of gas revenue denies the PHF of its due entitlement, the committee added.
Meanwhile, the Committee also discovered that Ministry of Finance has still not paid some $50 million advanced to it by the GNPC in 2013 for the construction of the Western Corridor roads leading to the Atuabo Gas Processing Plant.
According to PIAC’s semi-annual report on the management of the nation’s petroleum revenues, a direction by the Finance Ministry to the GNPC to have the loan amount expunged from it books in 2018, was in accordance to the Earmarked Funds Capping and Realignment Act.
The directive by the Finance Ministry however, followed a promise by the Ministry that provision had been made by the Ministry in the 2019 Budget for the settlement of the loan to the GNPC.
