Former Deputy Minister of Finance, Cassiel Ato Forson, has described claims by Finance Minister Ken Ofori Atta that ‘2020 is going to be a year of roads’ as a hoax.
According to him, the 2020 budget statement as presented by the Minister to Parliament last Wednesday does not indicate government is allocating revenue for the construction of roads.
He noted that Ken Ofori Atta over the past three years has perfected the art of siphoning funds from the road fund and other statutory funds to spend on consumption.
The 2020 budget, he said, is suffering from Kwashiokor because the loans government plans to contract over the coming years are going into consumption “chop chop.”
The Ranking Member of the Finance Committee who was contributing to the 2020 budget debate in Parliament on Monday 18th November 2019 accused the Akufo-Addo government of consistently going to the capital market only to fund consumption.
According to him, from the 2020 budget, the Ghana Road Fund is expected to accumulate an amount of GH¢1.659 billion and yet out of this, the Finance Minister is allocating approximately GH¢1 billion cedis to the fund.
“For 2020, again an amount of GH¢645 million will be taken from the Ghana Road Fund.”
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“Over the period from 2019 to 2020, our Minister of Finance intends to take from the Road Fund alone an amount of GH¢2.2 billion.”
“That amount is indeed more than what Sinohydro is bringing into the economy,” he stated.
According to him, though the government is touting 2020 as the year of roads, revenue has not been allocated for the construction of the roads.
“Where are the resources, Mr. Minister, where are the resources? Your budget statement does not point to the fact that you are allocating revenue to those roads.”
“I can confidently say ‘the year of road’ is a hoax,” he stated.
He added, “In 2018 government went to the capital market and raised an amount of GH¢5.1 billion out of which only GH¢1.2 billion was used for capital expenditure. The remaining GH¢3.8 billion went into consumption.”
“In the year 2019, they went to the capital market again and raised an amount of GH¢13.1 billion. Of this amount, they used only GH¢469.7 million for capital expenditure. Where is the rest of the money,” he queried?
“Over the period they intend to raise GH¢35 billion from the capital market but capital expenditure over the same period amounts to only GH¢2.9 billion.”
Ato Forson lamented that the government has not outlined how the remaining money would be used, indicating it is going ‘for chop chop,” and that should be a major worry to Ghanaians.
He stressed that despite the fact that government has borrowed US$88.8 billion in just 31 months, only US$15.6 billion has gone into capital expenditure because the remaining amount has been used to address ‘the Kwashiokor.’
