The Ministry of Finance has accused the previous Akufo-Addo administration of diverting $65 million from a World Bank-funded flood protection project to finance Covid-19 activities.<\/p>\n
Technical Advisor at the Ministry of Finance, Frederick Amissah, said the money formed part of the Greater Accra Resilient and Integrated Development (GARID) Project, which was intended to tackle flooding but was instead redirected during the pandemic.<\/p>\n
Speaking on JoyNews\u2019\u00a0PM Express<\/em>\u00a0on Monday, July 6, he rejected suggestions that delays in the release of funds had affected the project.<\/p>\n \u201cThere haven\u2019t been any delays in the release of funds, and I just don\u2019t know where that is coming from,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Mr Amissah stressed that GARID was one of several World Bank loan projects contracted by the state and should be treated with greater accountability because the country is obliged to repay the loans.<\/p>\n He said the Mahama administration uncovered several cases in which borrowed funds had been used inappropriately after assuming office in 2025.<\/p>\n He cited the Ghana Economic Transformation (GET) Project, claiming that almost GH\u00a21 billion was spent on travel in 2024.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was a project called the Ghana Economic Transformation (GET) Project, and almost \u00a21 billion was spent on travelling in 2024. In one year alone, a billion Ghana cedis was used to travel for a World Bank project,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Mr Amissah said President John Mahama directed the Finance Minister in March 2025 to support the flood response committee with resources from the GARID facility after it was established.<\/p>\n He explained that the project was valued at $350 million, with $137 million already drawn down.<\/p>\n \u201cNearly half of the $137 million went into COVID expenditure; it was redirected to COVID,\u201d he stated.<\/p>\n According to him, the total amount diverted for Covid was $65 million.<\/p>\n \u201cEven the $65 million that was transferred for the purpose of COVID, only $60.8 million has been successfully retired. About $4.2 million remains unretired.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked whether the Covid emergency justified redirecting the funds, Mr Amissah disagreed.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was no justification for that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n He argued that government already had access to other funding sources, including the Stabilisation Fund established during President Mahama\u2019s first administration, support from the International Monetary Fund, and facilities from the African Development Bank.<\/p>\n He maintained that Covid spending contributed significantly to Ghana\u2019s debt crisis because many of the resources obtained were loans rather than grants.<\/p>\n Providing further details, Mr Amissah said that part of the diverted funds was used to finance fumigation activities.<\/p>\n \u201cFumigation took a chunk, for which we had about $2.8 million,\u201d he disclosed.<\/p>\n He also claimed that $60.8 million was shared to Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies, while more than $1 million was spent on quarantine feeding.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat actually perplexes me is that there was something that was described as support, support for Covid-19 activities of $3 million and we don\u2019t know what that is,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Mr Amissah criticised the use of the funds, insisting that public officials could not ignore what he described as the misuse of borrowed money, especially at a time when Ghana\u2019s economic crisis was driven by rising debt.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Disclaimer: The content provided on Fish FM Online is for informational and entertainment purposes only. While we strive for accuracy, we do not guarantee the completeness, reliability, or timeliness of the information presented. Fish FM Online and its affiliates are not responsible for any errors or omissions, nor for any decisions made based on the content available on our platform.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Ministry of Finance has accused the previous Akufo-Addo administration of diverting $65 million from a World Bank-funded flood protection project to finance Covid-19 activities. Technical Advisor at the Ministry of Finance, Frederick Amissah, said the money formed part of the Greater Accra Resilient and Integrated Development (GARID) Project, which was intended to tackle flooding […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":123457,"featured_media":17042,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[347,1753,5363,2060],"class_list":["post-17041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general-news","tag-akufo-addo","tag-finance-ministry","tag-frederick-amissah","tag-garid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/123457"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17041"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17043,"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17041\/revisions\/17043"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}