Ghanaian Chronicle

World Bank bares teeth at Ghana

The Ghanaian Chronicle reports in its lead story that the Government of Ghana, last week, refunded 360,000 dollars (about 900 million cedis) to the World Bank which was demanded by the bank due to the government?s failure to follow the bank?s procedures.

According to the paper, failure to follow the bank?s procedures is an explanation for misapplication of funds. The Chronicle says the payment came ten months after the World Bank had written to the government in August last year, for the money, after the bank?s officers in Ghana had detected a "mis-procurement" of items during a routine auditing of funds allocated to the Ministry of Food and Agriculture through the Ministry of Finance for the implementation of a 29.06 million-dollar National Livestock Services Project being jointly financed by the World Bank and the Ghana Government.

The bank is contributing 22.45 million dollars through an International Development Assistance credit, while the Ghana Government had pledged a counterpart fund of 5.35 million dollars.