Facilities approved not new loans, will impact economy positively – Dep. Fin. Minister says
A Deputy Minister of Finance, John Kumah has stated that the outstanding loans that parliament approved following its recall to the House on Tuesday, May 2, 2023 were loans that had already been contracted but required parliamentary approval.
According to Mr. Kumah the loans will help the economy in terms of government priorities and commitments, adding that reforms are necessary to achieve efficiency in the country’s financial administration, adding that “they are positive loans that will impact the economy”
He also stated that the recall of parliament was to complete an “important assignment of loans that has been contracted previously but we have not been able to ratify in parliament. The facilities that were approved today are not new loans, they are already on our books and require parliamentary approval but we were unable to do before we rose the last time.
Some of the loans comprise ; a World Bank/IDA International Development Association Support for our Public Sector Reforms and Digitalisation Agenda of Government they the bank is supporting with some facilities, according to Mr.Kumah, they had to reallocate some funds -US$750m from Afreximbank that was approved last year “we needed to reallocate some of the funds to some more priortity projects of government, so these are not new loans, these are some of the reallocation we did and to approve the already made available funds ..which parliament had not been able to approve.
Finally, we also looked at the EIB facility of 170m euros which was on-lend to the Development Bank of Ghana(DBG), so parliament needed to approve those process as well, these are loans we have already taken on our books, so parliament just approved the on-lending agreement between government of Ghana and DBG, so we just want to put on record that government is not taking any facility, these are loans we have already contracted on our books and require parliamentary approval.”
The loans include financing agreement between government of ghana and International Development Association (IDA) of the World Bank Group for an amount of $150m to finance the West Africa Food System Resilience Programme. -Phase 2 under the Multi-Phase Programmatic Approach.
Financing agreement between GoG and IDA for an amount of $200m to finance the Ghana Digital Acceleration Project, financing agreement between GoG and IDA for an amount of U$60.6m as a third additional financing for the Ghana COVID-19 emergency preparedness and response project
Minority Leader, Dr.Ato Forson on his part indicated that his caucus voted against the loans, “majority alone to bear the cross”
Other bills that were approved includes; Excise Tax Stamp (Amendment)Bill 2022, Standard for Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information (Amendment) Bill, 2023 -it seeks to strengthen due diligence procedures and prescribe circumvention practices. Amends Act 967 of the 2018 law.
