Coronavirus: Finance Minister gives breakdown of GH¢54.3 million spent on food

Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta has provided a breakdown of the GH¢54.3 million that went towards the provision of food packages and hot cooked meals distributed by the government to mitigate the impact of the Coronavirus pandemic.

According to him, the government out of the figure, provided an amount of GH¢41 million to the Ghana National Buffer Stock Company to stock up food supply in the wake of the pandemic.

Additionally, the minister said an amount GH¢12 million was used for the provision of dry food packs and cooked meals went towards feeding the vulnerable during the three week partial lockdown.

Speaking in an interview on Accra based, Asaase Radio on Sunday, July 26, Ken Ofori Atta said; “I think we spent about GH¢12 million on 2.7 million packages of hot meals and we also funded the National Buffer Stock Company with ¢41 million to be able to purchase food supply such as rice, beans etc. and that’s all there is in terms of the funding and the quantities of the supply they bought.”

Addressing Parliament last week in the mid-year budget review, Ken Ofori-Atta noted that the government through the Gender Ministry and NADMO provided 1,827,581 and 917,142 cooked food packs to vulnerable persons within Accra and Kumasi respectively.

“Mr Speaker, the support to households, in terms of supply of dry food packs and hot cooked meals cost Government GH¢54.3 million to enable them to mitigate the impact of the pandemic. This was in addition to an amount of GH¢50.2 million transferred to the 400,000 most-vulnerable individuals under the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) Programme,” he earlier said.

Some social media users in Ghana and the general public have expressed doubts after revelations of government’s initiative to distribute hot meals to the underprivileged during a three-week COVID-19 lockdown costing the state over GH¢54 million.