Finance Ministry Is Most Fiscally Reckless – It Has Wasted Ghc11billion In 6 Years

Policy think tank, IMANI Ghana, has rated the Finance Ministry as the most fiscally reckless in Ghana’s machinery of government.

In its latest fiscal recklessness index launched on Tuesday, IMANI explained that the Ministry has recorded more than 11 billion cedis in losses to the state.

“over the 6-year period, the Ministry of Finance consistently appeared as the most reckless in the institution,” explained Dennis Asare, Research Consultant for IMANI Ghana.

“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. Asare explained while speaking at the launch of the fiscal recklessness index.

The losses were based on irregularities tracked in the Auditor-General’s reports between 2015 and 2020.

Citing examples, he said, “Commercial banks who collect tax revenue on behalf of government fail to lodge the funds based on the time frame provided by the PFM Act and that was one of the major issues that government faced. So overall, this is the fiscal recklessness of the 29 MDAs in Ghana.”

IMANI Ghana also observed that “the recklessness or the financial cost of the recklessness of the Ministries Departments and Agencies are increasing as compared to 2010 and 2014.

“If you compare 2010 to 2014, the financial cost of the recklessness of MDAs to the period 2015 and 2020, you see that the recklessness has increased for about 13 times. So between 2010 and 2014, the financial cost of irregularity was about 1.4 billion, but between 2015 and 2020 it is about 13.9 billion which shows that the Public Financial System that we have, to some extent is not delivering the level of efficiency,” he stressed.