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General News of Wednesday, 23 December 2015

Source: starrfmonline.com

Mahama must put costs to projects in ‘Green Book’ – Bawumia

Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia

The vice presidential candidate of the NPP has challenged the government to ascribe costs to all the projects it has catalogued in its latest Green Book to enable Ghanaians verify if the enormous resources accrued by the current government have been substantially invested in these projects.

Touching on the record of the NPP government, under the leadership of former President John Kufuor between 2001 and 2008, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia noted that with comparably little inflows of GHC20billion, the NPP was able to undertake several projects and social intervention policies.

On the contrary, the NDC administration had in the last seven years accrued 10 times (GHC200 billion) what the NPP had in eight years and yet had little to show for it.

“The NDC government over the last seven years has had at its disposal GHC200 billion from taxes, loans and oil. But what have its achievements been? The NDC has recently produced another “Green Book” to catalogue its so-called achievements in terms of projects undertaken, the very thing our President described in the past as an “exercise in mediocrity,” Dr Bawumia said over the weekend.

“What is interesting is that after seven years in power and after having over 200 billion Ghana cedis at its disposal, many of NDC projects in this catalogue are either still on the drawing board or artistic impressions. What really have they been doing for the people of Ghana in the past seven years?” he said.

Dr. Bawumia noted that most of the contracts given under the current government were either riddled with corruption or were grossly overpriced as a resort of the government’s resort to sole-sourcing as the primary method of awarding contracts.

“Many of these projects are overpriced as a result of the apparent resort to sole-sourcing as the primary method of procurement by this government. The country is therefore not getting value for money for these projects.

“It should be noted that this NDC government has actually borrowed some $37 billion in the last seven years (dollar equivalent at the time of borrowing). Nonetheless the total number of loan financed projects that the government is touting as having undertaken is below $5 billion. So where is the rest of the money? The government should put a price tag on all the projects it claims to have executed (along with the loans) and the lack of value for money will be immediately exposed to all,” he stated.