Finance Minister petitioned to provide more details on alleged GH¢2.75bn procurement savings

Some 20 Civil Society Groups together with the Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition have petitioned the Minister for Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta to provide more details on the over GH¢2bn reportedly saved through the review of sole-sourced and restrictive tendering contracts.

The Minister for Finance delivering the 2019 mid-year budget review in July in Parliament announced that some GH¢ 2.75 billion had been saved through thorough scrutiny of sole-sourced contracts as well as contracts awarded through restrictive tendering.

The Minister has since not provided details on the contracts or information on which specific procurement the savings were made on.

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These civil society groups are calling on the Minister to provide a full list of contracts from which the savings were made.

Executive Secretary of the Media Foundation for West Africa, one of the petitioners says the Minister should make such information public and provide guidance in future procurement applications.

“The biggest problem when it comes to corruption is in the area of public procurement and so if the government has consistently maintained that as a result of some prudent measures that were adopted, savings are being made to the tune of billions of cedis we think that it is important that the government makes the information open to the public so that we would all appreciate that the government is making towards ensuring value for money in procurement. If such information is put out, I guess all of us will learn from it and going forward be guided by what government is doing,” Sulemana Braimah told Citi News.

The Public Procurement Authority itself, in April 2019 announced that within the period April 2017 and December 2018, its outfit has saved the economy monies to the tune of GHC1.9 billion.

Saying that in 2016, under the administration of former President John Dramani Mahama, the Procurement Authority made zero savings, as compared to 2017 and 2018.

Details to back the claims are yet to be made known to the public.

President Akufo-Addo while addressing lawyers at the Bar Conference in Takoradi, last week said his government had saved a total of GHc2.75 billion from the review of sole-sourced procurement contracts.

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