Factors driving Ghana’s irregularities getting worse since 2018 – IMANI

Research Consultant at IMANI Centre for Policy and Education, Dennis Asare, has warned that the significant factors driving the country’s irregularity rate could worsen if the government fails to enforce tax compliance and improve cash management.

In an interview with Samuel Eshun on the Happy Morning Show, Mr Asare reiterated that the report focused more on operational efficiency than the conversation of political comparison.

He indicated that the five-year period of study for the report (2015-2020) straddles the erstwhile NDC government and the ruling NPP government, giving Ghanaians an assessment of how we are improving in terms of managing our public finances irrespective of whoever is in government.

“One thing we’ve tried to take out of the conversation is the political comparison. The idea is to give us a chance to reflect on operational efficiencies in our MDAs in terms of cash management, tax mobilization and other dimensions like contract management, stores procurement rent and even payroll,” he said.

“Nonetheless, as I previously stated, the highest irregularities we recorded were just around GHC500 million in 2010. In 2015, it was just a little over half a billion, and in 2016, it rose to a little over 2.1 billion. Between 2017 and 2020, the highest irregularity we recorded was in 2018, about GHC5.8 billion, and declined to about 3 billion, down to a little over 2 billion. That does not mean maybe one government is better than the other. What it clearly shows us is that the factors that drive these irregularities are becoming even worse and that we are losing our guard on tax compliance, cash management with stores and procurement issues increasing.”

“In fact, if you look at the auditor general’s report between 2010 and 2020, procurement irregularities alone are about GHC143 million. 2016/ 2020 alone accounted for almost GHC136 million of the GHC143 which means that the latter periods in the last five years the drivers of our irregularities mainly cash and tax are becoming worse. Raising issues about internal control system as well as tax enforcement and compliance mechanisms that we have in the country,” he added.

Dennis Asare further stated that stronger Public Finacial Management (PFM) would prevent such irregularities from occurring.