President John Mahama has decried the massive “waste in the public sector” and has promised to deal with it to “improve services” to Ghanaians.

Addressing his ministers Wednesday in a brainstorming session on the IMF bailout, President Mahama bemoaned the “leakages in the management of our public expenditure”, adding, his government is working towards “expenditure reduction.”

“Several initiatives have been undertaken and are underway to tighten expenditure controls…and address any leakages in the management of our public expenditure. There is a lot of waste in our public sector and we are dealing with this consistently in order to improve services to our citizens,” President Mahama said.

The IMF has raised issues about Ghana’s broad wage bill after its first round of talks with officials. President Mahama announced that Cabinet will soon consider “a more systematic policy measure on wage bill reduction” to clear the system of several ghost names.

He said: “You are all witnesses of the many efforts that have been unfolding daily in tackling fraud and other malfeasance in payroll management. Indeed, we are intending to lay before Cabinet a more systematic policy measure on wage bill reduction, remove fraud and create a cleaner and leaner wage bill, which will then introduce better management of the payroll going forward.”

According to the president, the IMF bailout will improve the living conditions of the vulnerable in society.

“We continue to seek the accelerated development and delivery of efficient social services to our citizens and to the most vulnerable segments of our society, especially women, children and the disabled. We expect that this will form a key part of the programme we agree with the IMF,” President Mahama stated.