The Minority caucus in Parliament has indicated that following government’s appetite for borrowing, it will require an amount of about Ghc8.4 billion to service loans for the year 2014.

The New Patriotic Party (NPP) Members of Parliament (MPs) said “loans are not grants or gifts. The nation will be required to pay and service them before the repayment date is due. In this regard, the nation should have the best value for money for any loan contracted.”

Addressing a press conference in Accra on Monday, on the Ghana government’s US$156 million IDA loan for senior high school project, Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said although they will support initiative that improves secondary education, “what we cannot be proud of is the unfortunate attempt by the administration to use secondary education as an excuse to misappropriate public funds.”

Mr. Agyeman-Manu further gave reasons for opposing the US$156 million loan approved by Parliament last week.

The NPP MPs in opposing the approval of the loan called for a head count after the debate on the floor of the House which saw the majority side beating them by 105 votes against 85 votes.

While acknowledging that government may need to take “loans for very important programs and projects, we must take cognisance of the fact that the servicing of loans is very much negatively impacting on the national treasury.”

The PAC Chairman further stated that government budgeted for and got approval to construct 50 senior high schools in 2014 at a unit cost of Ghc4.4 million; however, “government is seeking to construct the same schools at a unit cost of US$4.3 million, the equivalent of Ghc13.76 million.”

Touching on the scholarship secretariat, he stated that creating another secretariat to administer the new scholarship scheme will be misuse of public funds since “staff at the Scholarship Secretariat has very little work to do because government cannot provide them with funds to administer to students on state scholarship.”

On the Ghc51 million for monitoring and evaluation, Mr. Agyeman-Manu said the amount could be used to build four additional Senior High Schools or upgrade 132 schools.

The MPs further questioned if the World Bank was satisfied with the sustainability consideration of the project and the use of substantial portions of the facility for setting up parallel institutions for the purpose of the programme.

“This project, as it stands, is bad. We believe that an important initiative to improve senior high education is being contaminated by the greed and illegitimate interests of people in government. For the sake of the national interest, this must be stopped,” he added.