Member of Parliament for North Tongu, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, has lamented the current state of the economy.
In a December 7, 2022 post on his social media handles, the lawmaker highlighted two major expenditure items of government which he has serially stated were part of reckless expenditure by the Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo government.
The two are the use of private chartered jets by president Akufo-Addo for certain overseas travels and the pumping of state funds into the National Cathedral project.
The text of Ablakwa’s post read: “They called me names and their Ministers refused to answer my urgent questions in Parliament when I consistently cautioned about their profligate and reckless decisions — €20,000 an hour chartered luxury jets, unlawfully squandering over GHS330million on a cathedral. Now here we are.”
It was accompanied by a series of photos of the luxury LXD-IO jet that president Akufo-Addo had been routinely chartering over the last two years especially for overseas trips.
Okudzeto Ablakwa has maintained a dogged campaign in pointing out what he described as profligate expenditure by the government.
Whiles efforts to get official records of the cost of the presidential jet travels have serially failed even through Parliament, the issue of the National Cathedral recently got concrete answers especially from Minister of Finance Ken Ofori-Atta.
He disclosed while appearing before an ad hoc committee of Parliament that monies paid in lieu of the project were drawn from the Contingency Fund.
For the first time, government also included an expenditure item relating to the project in the 2023 budget with an amount of GHC80 million cedis earmarked for disbursement.
Ghana is currently facing economic headwinds with a domestic debt programme facing opposition from stakeholders – largely from institutional bondholders.
Government is hoping to close a deal on debt restructuring at home in order to be able to access an International Monetary Fund, IMF, facility to support the failing economy.