Corruption galore! GHC230, 000 for MPs furniture

The Mahama-Amissah-Arthur led National Democratic Congress (NDC) administration, Monday brought to Parliament for approval, a US$26.5 million loan agreement as additional funding for furniture, fixtures and fitting for Members of Parliament for the completion of “Job 600”.

This translates into some GHC230, 434 for the provision of furniture and fittings for every MP's office. Analysts who spoke to The New Statesman on this have described this as “inflated and possibly riddled with corruption”.

The loan agreement presented to Parliament is between the government of Ghana and Fidelity Bank.

This loan agreement is part of a whopping $417.17 million worth of loans presented by President John Mahama and his ruling National Democratic Congress for approval.

It is recalled that before Parliament rose on the August 16, a total of $2 billion worth of loans were approved. As of July 2012, Ghana's total debt stood at GHC28.3 billion, with analysts stating that it was set to rise to some GHC35 billion by December 2012.

The list of loans presented by the NDC government to Parliament includes a loan of $40 million between the government of Ghana and the National Bank for Economic and Social Development, and the Bank of Brazil supported by the Brazilian Official Equalization Programme to finance the civil engineering works related to the construction of roads comprising the Eastern Corridor Road Project.

Others are the $200 million agreement between the government, Barclays Bank, CAL Bank, Bank of Africa (GH) Limited, Bank of Baroda, Ghana Commercial Bank, Merchant Bank, the Trust Bank, Unibank (Ghana) Limited for the financing of the construction of 4,120 affordable housing for the public services of Ghana.

This implies that the average cost of a house is pegged at $48,453 or GHC97,087. The house has been described as “certainly unfordable for the average Ghanaian worker” by housing analyst contacted by this paper.

Another loan worth 43,784,093.97 Euro will also be presented to Parliament, and the agreement is between the government and HSBC for the Turnkey Redevelopment of the Ghana Police Hospital.

A loan of 50 million Euros to finance the execution of the Kpong Generation Station Retrofit Project has also been submitted to Parliament for approval.

As though this was not enough, a loan amounting to 13,735,800 Euro between the government of Ghana and the KBC Bank NV, Belgium, has also been presented to Parliament for the implementation of a Technology-based learning solution.