The Ministry of Finance has rejected claims by the Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC) that the it has failed to provide the needed financial assistance for PIAC to Police Ghana’s oil revenue.
[contextly_sidebar id=”PxHZAm5LScFsq2mjiMb18JBgGn5aK8yQ”]According to the ministry, a significant amount of the budget of the body has already been released to them.
PIAC had on several occasions accused government of deliberately starving them of the needed funds to run their basic activities including publishing their reports as mandated by law.
But in an interview with Citi News’ Raymond Acquah, a Senior Economist at the Ministry of Finance, Jones Obeng insisted most of the claims by PIAC are untrue since the ministry has done all it can within its financial capacity to adequately fund PIAC’s activities.
“We have given them GH¢280,000 as the annual budget. First quarter we gave them GH¢70,000, second quarter we gave them GH¢70,000 for their operations. Now they are left with GH¢70,000 for the fourth quarter that is supposed to be allocated for them.”
He said in 2014″we gave them GH¢500,000 and a memo came round that we are supposed to slash every MDAs budget by 44% and because we slashed their budget, it came to GH¢280,000.”
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By: Godwin A. Allotey/citifmonline.com/Ghana