The Ghana Statistical Service and the Audit Service have dismissed claims by two World Bank consultants to the GSS that remittances from Ghanaians abroad in 2005 were 253 million cedis.

While the Audit Service insisted that remittances in that year were $4.76 billion, the GSS distanced itself from the claims of the two consultants saying that it had no idea where they got the figure from.

"The figure they quoted is without basis," the Auditor- General, Edward Dua Agyemang has said.

The World Bank Consultants, Messrs Harold Coulombe and Quentin Wodon were quoted in the Ghanaian Chronicle issue of Tuesday, May 8, 2007 as saying that a recent report on poverty by the GSS had indicated that, "In a 12 month period from 2005 to 2006, Ghanaians abroad remitted to Ghana $253 million.

That figure, the paper claimed, was contained in the GSS report on poverty and fell far short of the $4 billion quoted by the President at various times suggesting that the President had told an untruth.

However the Director of Cooperation and Capacity Building Division of the GSS, Kofi Agyemang Duah considered that assertion very strange because the report never touched on remittances on any of its parts.

To substantiate his contention, he said nowhere in the "Report on Patterns and Trends of Poverty in Ghana 1991-2006" was the issue of remittances covered.

Mr Agyemang Duah said the GSS had not yet generated the tables to be used for the main report and therefore he could not confirm or deny any figure mentioned in the public domain.

He however indicated that there were institutions such as the Bank of Ghana, the Audit Service and the Accountant General's Department which dealt with such figures on an annual basis.

According to the Auditor General, audited figures from the BoG indicated that in 2005, foreign remittances amounted to $4.76 billion, up from $3 billion in 2004, $2.16 billion in 2003 and $1.34 billion in 2002.

The provisional figure for January to July 2006 stood at $3.22 billion.


Source: The Daily Graphic