Finance Ministry refutes allegations of recklessness by IMANI

A Deputy Minister of Finance, John Kumah has refuted the Imani Center for Policy and Education’s claim that the Ministry of Finance had the highest level of fiscal recklessness between the years 2015 and 2020.

According to the second Fiscal Recklessness Index 2020 Report, which utilized the Auditor General’s report to assess the fiscal recklessness of Ministries, Departments and Agencies, the Finance Ministry was responsible for about GHS 11 billion in losses to the state due to its recklessness.

But in a response, Dr. John Kumah described the report as a poor job.

“I read the IMANI report and I think it was a poor job done. It only rehashed the finding of the Auditor General Department’s report which was widely misinterpreted by many Ghanaians to say that Ghana had lost billion of Cedi which was not true”.

Mr. Kunah also noted that “when you accumulate previous audit irregularities and you fail to tell us the following year’s activities which recovered much of the losses from the previous years, then you will be double-counting the irregularities for example in the year 2018 when they said the GRA did not collect about GHc. 5 million in taxes, in the following year, GRA came up with a report to show that 95% of the said amount has been collected with the rest 5% being matters of litigations.

Source: Citi Business News