Imani Ghana named the Finance Ministry the most financially imprudent ministry.
This is according to IMANI Ghana’s newest fiscal irresponsibility index, which was released on Tuesday.
According to policy Think Tank officials, the Ministry has lost more than 11 billion cedis to the state.
The losses were calculated based on anomalies identified in Auditor-General reports between 2015 and 2020.
Speaking today at the Accra Forum, Research Consultant for the IMANI Ghana, Dennis Asare said, “over the 6-year period, the Ministry of Finance consistently appeared as the most reckless in the institution.”
“One major reason is that when we say Ministry of Finance, it is not Ministry of Finance Headquarters. When we say Ministry of Finance in the Auditor-General’s report, it includes subsidiary agencies like the GRA, because the Ministry of Finance, beyond its role as a sector ministry, is also a central management entity, that also coordinates the work of other ministries. So sometimes, if there is an irregularity, it also appears in the activities of the Ministry of Finance. Key institutions that came out strongly were the GRA and the Controller and Accountant General’s Department,” Mr. Dennis Asare elaborated.
“Commercial banks that collect tax money on behalf of the government fail to lodge the cash within the time frame required by the PFM Act, and that was one of the primary challenges that the administration encountered,” he continued.
Overall, this is the fiscal irresponsibility of Ghana’s 29 MDAs.”
According to him, IMANI Ghana has also seen that “the recklessness or the financial cost of the irresponsibility of the Ministries, Departments, and Agencies is increasing in comparison to 2010 and 2014.”
Mr. Asare went on to say that this shows the current public financial system is inefficient.
“When you compare the financial cost of MDA recklessness from 2010 to 2014 to 2015 and 2020, you can see that the recklessness has increased by about 13 times.”
So, between 2010 and 2014, the financial cost of irregularity was approximately 1.4 billion, but between 2015 and 2020, it is approximately 13.9 billion, indicating that the Public Financial System that we have is not, to some extent, achieving the level of efficiency,” he said.
The Health Ministry was also named the country’s second most fiscally imprudent agency.
Source: myjoyonline.com
