Government has made no payment to a UK-based firm for the supply of security infrastructure without parliamentary approval, as alleged by the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP).<\/p>\n
The party alleged that government has signed a fraudulent deal worth about $300 million for the supply of national security equipment with UK-based firm, Santa Barron.<\/p>\n
[contextly_sidebar id=”c2SobRCLRpi7kKfV3GIzUbFhWYKR2WRi”]The NPP further\u00a0said,\u00a0government\u00a0has already paid the UK-based firm $120 million dollars for the supply of the equipment in November without due diligence.<\/p>\n
But according to the Finance Minister, Seth Terkper, government has also not made any payments as alleged by the NPP.<\/p>\n
Responding to questions on the issue on the Citi Breakfast Show<\/strong>, Mr. Terkper was adamant that\u00a0\u201cno payment was made, let us establish that fact. Let me state for a fact that no payment was made. No advanced payment was made. I say that for a fact and I challenge anybody.\u201d<\/p>\n His answers align with that of the Chairman of Interior and Defence Committee in Parliament, Fritz Baffour, who described the claims as ridiculous.<\/p>\n According to Mr. Baffour, his committee was not aware of such expenditure given that such a deal would have come before his committee before being initiated.<\/p>\n Without going into details, Mr. Terkper explained that the deal which kicks in 2017 \u201cwas medium term plan for the supply of security\u201d that could enhance revenue from peace keeping\u00a0efforts.<\/p>\n \u201cInstead of buying things ad hoc, the more equipment you have, the more you earn on peacekeeping for example. So we are saying let\u2019s aggregate, let\u2019s buy the revenue in bulk so it can be deployed and then the peace keeping revenues and others can be accrued,\u201d he noted.<\/p>\n On the Finance Ministry’s part, Mr. Terkper noted that, \u201cthe step we took was to say the Ministry of Interior must encumber its budget resources for that.\u201d<\/p>\n Company has track record in Ghana<\/strong><\/p>\n He also denied claims that the company lacked any track record with Ghana and was \u201cestablished just yesterday\u201d as purported by the NPP.<\/p>\n \u201cThe company is not six months old. The company was actually established in 1993 and has been doing business in Ghana over the years,\u201d the Finance Minister said.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n By: Delali Adogla-Bessa\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Government has made no payment to a UK-based firm for the supply of security infrastructure without parliamentary approval, as alleged by the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP). The party alleged that government has signed a fraudulent deal worth about $300 million for the supply of national security equipment with UK-based firm, Santa Barron. [contextly_sidebar id=”c2SobRCLRpi7kKfV3GIzUbFhWYKR2WRi”]The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":247926,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10,11],"tags":[3,56,13903,2630],"yoast_head":"\n