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Finance Minister petitioned over alleged GH¢2.7bn procurement savings

 Anti-graft agencies and civil society organisations (CSOs) have petitioned the Finance Minister for further and better particulars on the over GH¢2bn reportedly saved through the review of sole-sourced and restrictive tendering contracts.

He has since not provided details on the contracts on specific procurement savings that were made on but the anti-graft agencies and CSOs have asked for full list of contracts from which savings were made.

Ken Ofori-Atta, the Finance Minister delivering 2019 mid-year budget review in Parliament announced GH¢2.75 billion had been saved through scrutiny of sole-sourced contracts as well as contracts awarded through restrictive tendering.

Sulemana Braimah, the Executive Secretary of the Media Foundation for West Africa, one of the petitioners, said making such information public would be instructive and provide guidance in future procurement applications.

“The biggest challenge when it comes to corruption is public procurement, if the government has consistently maintained as a result of prudent measures adopted, savings made of billions of Ghana Cedis, it is important the government gives information to the public.

 “We will all appreciate the government is making effort towards ensuring value for money in procurement, if information is put out, learn from it, going forward be guided by what the government is doing since Public Procurement Authority (PPA), in April 2019 announced within the period of April 2017 and December 2018, has saved economy monies of GH¢1.9 billion,” Mr Braimah stated.

The president had claimed his government had saved a total of GH¢2.75 billion from review of sole-sourced procurement contracts in spite of recent happenings at PPA, GH¢2.75 billion has been saved for public exchequer from January 2017 to July 2019 as a result of reviewing contracts brought before it for approval either under sole-sourcing or restrictive tendering procedures.

But the claim has been challenged by a number of people including the National Democratic Congress who trashed all claims made by the president and submitted that the claim was false and challenged him to publish the full list of specific cases of savings. -citinewsroom.com

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