The West African Examinations Council (WAEC), says it will not be able to sort out all debtors ahead of the 2024 Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE).

This, according to the Council, is due to the outstanding arrears owed by the government.

Last Friday, the Finance Ministry released over 47 million cedis to defray part of about 90 million cedis owed to the examination body.

• Read also: BECE might be postponed if gov’t fails to release GH₵90m – WAEC

But speaking to JoyNews, spokesperson for WAEC, John Kapi, said the amount released will be used to tackle the salient items on its scale of preference.

"Currently, we have been able to print some answer booklets to the tune of about 12.6million cedis. We have been able to buy pencils to the tune of 1.146million and we have also bought bond paper for printing that cost about 48million Ghana cedis.

"So if we talk about our scale of preference, then what we are saying is that we will not be able to pay our debtors, however, we will be able to conduct the examination as we are supposed to do".

• Read also: We’ve received only GH¢47m from gov’t, not GH¢80m – WAEC

The revelation comes days after the West African Examinations Council clarified that it only received some GH¢47.125 million from the government contrary to the GH¢80 million announced in Parliament by the Majority Chief Whip, Frank Annoh-Dompreh.

Mr Annoh-Dompreh, who is also the Member of Parliament for Nsawam Adoagyiri, told the House that the Ministry of Finance had released the amount to the council on Friday [June 21, 2024].

Mr Kapi said it was rather GH¢47.125 million that was received on Friday.

Even with that, he said it has been processed through the Government Integrated Financial Management System (GIFMIS), and that it was yet to be translated into real cash.