How Akufo-Addo’s Salary Fattened From Mahama’s Ghc29,000 in 2016 To Ghc47,000 In 2020

When President Akufo-Addo took over the baton of office from former President John Mahama in 2017, the monthly salary for the President was Ghc29, 899.

However, the President’s salary has thenceforth been put on steroids and is now fatter, juicier and almost twice what his predecessor was earning in office.

From Mahama’s Ghc29,899 a month in December 2016, Akufo-Addo draws a whopping Ghc47,277 a month.

The new salary for the President was recommended by the Prof. Yaa Ntiamoah-Baidu Committee set up to review emoluments of Article 71 office -holders. The same Committee also recommended that Vice President Bawumia’s salary be increased to Ghc39,397 from Ghc35,816.

Juicy increases have also been awarded to Cabinet Ministers, Ministers of State and indeed all Article 71 office-holders at a time that the government has been sermonizing that these are days of austerity and therefore Ghanaians should, proverbially, “tighten their belts.”

Added to the ballooned salary is a slew of perks include fleets of cars, traveling allowances and other allowances.

Also, the recommendations of the Ntiamoah-Baidu Committee include the point that the new salaries for the President, his Ministers and other Article 71 office-holders, are to take retrospective effect from 2017.

“The salaries, facilities and privileges recommended, as well as the other specific recommendations outlined, when approved, shall take effect from January 2017,” the Committee’s recommendation went.

What this means is that the Ghc47, 277 that President Akufo-Addo is to earn now, is supposed to be treated as what he was supposed to have earned in 2017 when he became President, and thus, the President will be earning some GHC 64, 000 monthly for the next four years till he serves his last term in 2024.

This backdated salary is for the P his Vice, his Ministers and all the Article 71 office holders as well.

In 2017, when Mr. Akufo-Addo became President, he had inherited an office with a monthly salary of Ghc29, 899 from former President John Mahama. Mr. Akufo-Addo immediately increased it to Ghc35, 520.

In 2018, the President’s salary was increased again to Ghc39,072, and then to Ghc42,979 in 2019 before the Ntiamoah-Baidu Committee recommended it to be increased to Ghc47,277 in 2020 and made to take retrospective effect from 2017.

For Vice President Bawumia, he succeeded the late Vice President Paa Kwesi Amissah-Arthur in 2017 with a monthly salary of Ghc26, 909. In 2017, that salary was increased to Ghc29,600, and then increased again to Ghc32,560 in 2018 and then to Ghc 35,816 in 2019, before the Ntiamoah Baidu Committee recommended that his salary be increased to Ghc39,397 in 2020.

Again the differences between all his previous salaries to the current one are to be calculated and paid to him as arrears.

Meanwhile, while feting himself with the bloated salary, President Akufo Addo has also Okayed recommendations that his wife, Rebecca Akufo Addo and Second Lady, Samira Bawumia should be put on salaries on the same levels as that of cabinet ministers.