Parliament approves 7 loans in excess of $750 million in hours

Parliament on Tuesday approved approximately US$750 million for the financing of various projects being pursued by the government.

These include a facility from the International Development Association (IDA) of the World Bank Group of US$60 million as a Third Additional Financing for the Ghana COVID-19 Emergency Preparedness and Response Project; US$150 million to finance the West Africa Food System Resilience Programme Phase 2 under the Multi-Phase Programmatic Approach; US$150 million to finance the Primary Healthcare Investment Project; US$150 million to finance the public financial management for service delivery programme and US$200 million to fund the Ghana Digital Acceleration.

The others include €170 million from the Development Bank Ghana (DBG) for establishing the Development Bank of Ghana (DBG); US$30 million from the Export-Import Bank of Korea to finance the Medical Equipment Provision.

Chairman of the Finance Committee, Kweku Kwarteng, who presented the various reports to the House, indicated that given the enormous benefits to be derived from the multiple projects and their capacity to address press challenges and vulnerabilities in the sectors, the projects are intended for, the Committee by majority decision recommended to the House to adopt the report and approve the loans.

Deputy Minister for Finance, John Kumah, explained during an interview with topnews Parliamentary Correspondent ,Yesmeen Abubakar that the loans approved are not new loans but are already on the government’s books and only require Parliamentary approval, which was not done before the House rose sine die.

“So we just want to put on record that the government is not taking new facilities. These are loans we have already contracted, and all required Parliamentary approval. So that is what we want to put on record,” he said.

The Deputy Minister assured that the approval would help the government’s quest to have the country recover from the economic crisis.

Minority leader Dr Cassiel Ato Forson, however, argued that at a time the country is in dire distress, it is very wrong for the government to still consider and to even have the courage to add on the public debt.

The Minority, he said, was vehemently opposed to the approval of the loan facilities that amount to about $750 million.

The Minority leader appealed to civil society organizations and well-meaning Ghanaians to join them in opposing the government vehemently because the Akufo-Addo administration is a government that will never learn.