The Member of Parliament for Bolgatanga Central, Isaac Adongo is accusing the incumbent government of altering the country's budget deficit figures.
"Mr Speaker, the budget deficit and the manipulations over the years have always been my best subject when the budget comes to this floor and today, I intend to demonstrate that our budget deficit has been massaged by GH₵25 billion," he said.
Mr Adongo in his submission to the House alleged that the government had not been transparent in accounting to the country funds it had procured externally to fight the pandemic.
"How can you look at our faces and do this to us? These are the monies you have spent. What it means is that expenditure totalling about 25 billion has disappeared from our expenditure framework. Completely disappeared from our framework and these are expenditures relating to Covid-19 programme expenditure," he stated.
Calling it "dangerous times for the people of Ghana", he indicated that on cash basis, the budget deficit value is about GH₵18.6 billion.
"Mr Speaker, the whole world is worried about transparency in the utilisation of Coronavirus funds to fight Covid. Even accounting for the money have spent you can't and you are taxing to take more," he bemoaned.
According to him, program loans of about GH₵7.5 billion have also disappeared from the deficit and not factored into the reported amount of about GH₵388 million given by the Finance Minister.
"I was very sad to see a report in the budget that says that our program loans was only 388 million," he stated.
Mr Adongo said the funds received from the World Bank, RPF, African Development Bank, the IMF when put together would not amount to GH₵388 million.
He indicated that GH₵512 million was spent from the 1.3 billion given by the World bank, RPF and African Development.
Referring to the appendices of the 2021 Budget Statement, he stated: "Mr Speaker, this page [275] is listing all the program loans you contracted and spent and this the minister's note on page 275. We also got another $65 million which amounted to GHC377 million out of which we spent GHC343 million.
"He (Finance Minister) says that there is also a fast track Covid-19 facility of 130 million from the World Bank. That amount we spent entirely and is about 754 million. It says that IMF gave us the equivalent of 5,85,000,000 out of which we spent 5,56,000,000.
"The European Union also gave us 540 million and we spent the entire amount. Mr Speaker how can all these put together, somebody will look us in the face and say that he only got 388 million. I can't imagine this. GH₵7.5billion has disappeared from our deficit," he said.
He also added that although $2 billion from Eurobond was approved to be spent on the budget by Parliament, $3 billion was spent by the Ministry of Finance.
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