NDC cites inflation, cedi depreciation as reasons for pegging filing fee at GH₵500k

The National Democratic Congress(NDC) has cited the current state of the Ghanaian economy as the basis for pegging the filing fee of its Presidential Primaries at GH₵500,000.00.

Addressing journalists at the party’s headquarters on the scheduled timetable for both parliamentary and presidential primaries of the party, General Secretary Fiifi Kwetey announced that individuals seeking to contest the parliamentary primaries will pay a nomination of GH₵5000 and a filing fee of GH₵40,000.00 while presidential aspirants pay GH₵30,000.00 for nomination and GH₵500,000.00 for filing.

He explained that the National Executive Committee arrived at the fees by taking into consideration the current inflation and cost of running the elections.

Though the 2023 fees are higher than fees paid by aspirants in the 2019 primaries, the General Secretary argued that the value of the current fees still falls below that of 2019.

“Why we settled for GH₵500,000.00 is that four years ago when we organized this same presidential primaries we settle we settled for a nonrefundable fee of GH₵300,000.00. That was four years ago. Now four years ago, GH₵300,000.00, giving what is happening to this economy, giving the complete devastation of the economy and not just to our cedi; because of the abysmal performance of the government that we have today, GH₵300,000.00 in 2019 compared to GH₵500,000.00 today then you would say this is less than the previous that our aspirants were made to pay. We settled for it even though in real terms it is actually less,” he said.

The party through the NEC has settled to hold its presidential and parliamentary primaries on Saturday, May 13, 2023.

Per the timetable outlined, aspirants are expected to pick up nomination forms from the party’s website or its headquarters.

Filing of nominations will take place between Wednesday, February 22 to Friday, February 24.

The submission and filing of forms would also take place from Monday, March 20, 2023, to Wednesday, March 22, 2023.