Member of Parliament for North Tongu, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, has disclosed that the Finance Minister, Ken Ofor-Atta, has become the first finance minister to squander GHC12.4 million of the country’s oil revenues to pay a judgment debt.
According to him, apart from “dangerous Ken”, none of Ghana’s Finance Ministers have dared to “touch or waste” the precious oil revenues to pay judgment debt. He indicated that every other day, new evidence is discovered on Ken Ofori-Atta’s “gross mismanagement and destruction” of the Ghanaian economy which has resulted in the current crisis.
“For the first time since Ghana started commercial oil production some 10 years ago, embattled Ken Ofori-Atta becomes the only Finance Minister to squander a staggering GHS12.4million (GHS12,475,426.01) of our oil revenues to pay a judgment debt.”
Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa
The North Tongu legislator expressed chagrin over the current economic crisis which the minority has for some time attributed to mismanagement by government. He indicated that there is the need for government to resolve challenges within the country.
“We are tired of the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia/Ofori-Atta recklessness!”
Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa
PIAC against judgement debts
The Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC) in May this year, expressed worry over the manner in which oil revenue was being used to pay judgement debt awarded against the state.
Describing the development as unacceptable, the committee stated that a report from the Ministry of Finance in 2021 indicated that oil revenue was used to pay judgement debts amounting to GHC12 million in various sectors, including roads and railways.
The Chairman of the committee, Eric Defor, noted that it was the first time PIAC had found out that oil revenue had been used to service judgement debt. He stated that PIAC was still investigating to know why such judgement debts were incurred.
Mr Defor noted that the committee assumed that the debts were due to the non-payment of work done in the infrastructural sector. Nonetheless, he explained that such developments should not have happened because budgets were provided for such contracts.
The PIAC Chairman highlighted that it was within the authority of implementing agencies of such projects to pay on time to avert situations where contractors would have to resort to legal action for judgement debts to be paid to them.
PIAC, according to him, considered such a situation a misplaced one.
He, therefore, called for further investigations to be done on the payment of such judgement debts using oil revenues and the practice stopped.
Mr Defor asserted that PIAC, through investigations, found out that some projects said to be sited in certain locations across the country were not actually there. He said even the local or sub-national authorities were not aware of such projects.
It will be recalled that in the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, in 2019 stated that government pays over GHC94 million to individuals and companies in judgement annually.
He explained that most of the judgement debts are due to court orders for breaches of contracts as well as compensations for personal injury claims and acquisitions. Mr. Ofori-Atta said this on the floor of Parliament, in an answer to a question posed by Mr. Cassiel Ato Forson, the ranking member on finance, about how much government has paid in judgement debt from January 2017 to date.
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