Gov't spends GH¢4.3bn on single spine

Government spent 4.3 billion Ghana Cedis on wages and salaries alone for the first half of this year. This represents 70.1 percent of total revenue.

The figure is a little higher than the one recorded during the same period last year. Speaking at the ongoing public forum on the Single Spine Pay Policy at Ho, Finance Minister, Seth Tekper said public sector wages and salaries for this year could reach 9 billion Ghana Cedis.

He explained that the policy is not sustainable going forward. “The key point here is that you can see that if you are to just use the non earmarked funds you are using everything to pay wages. We still have some arrears which are pending this is the reality”, Mr. Tekper added.

The Finance Minister said the single spine pay policy is not sustainable going forward since if care is not taken the wage bill could exceed the total revenue. This means government has no option to borrow.

The forum came on the heels of calls for the pay policy to be scraped because of its impact on the wage bill.