…as Parliament passes Appropriation bill
Parliament has passed the Appropriation Bill, 2021 to give the Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta the authority to access and withdraw GH¢129 billion to run the economy for the 2021 financial year.
The Bill, which was passed on Tuesday, enables the Minister to access the funds which will be issued from the Consolidated Fund and other public funds for purposes of carrying out the services of government effectively and efficiently for the period.
The report of the Finance Committee on the Appropriation Bill, 2021 noted that departments and agencies shall be permitted to retain and use an amount of GH¢5,893,772,350 billion of Internally Generated Funds (IGFs) during the 2021 financial year.
The report also stated that, out of the total of GH¢129,032,804,201 estimated expenditure in 2021, GH¢80,869,525,482 billion would constitute payments of “other government obligations” whilst the rest would cover discretionary payments.
A total of GH¢30.3 billion will be used to service the compensation of public sector employees while GH¢25.6 billion will cater for wages and salaries.
The government has also allocated GH¢4.5 billion for COVID-19 related expenditures, with GH¢200 million allocated to COVID-19 Alleviation Programme (Electricity and Water), and GH¢929 million set aside for the procurement of COVID-19 vaccines (Operations and procurement).
The House also approved an allocation of GH¢597 million for the National COVID-19 Response and another GH¢1.4 billion to provide health infrastructure within the 2021 financial year, among other expenditures.
The passage of the bill comes following the House’s approval of various sums of budget estimates for ministries, departments and agencies.
Prior to the approval of the Appropriation Bill, the House approved GH¢45.5 million for the construction of 70 constituency offices for 70 Members of Parliament this year. The approval is aims at constructing 70 constituency offices per year over a four-year period.
The House had also earlier approved a number of budget estimate for the various ministries, departments and agencies for the for the implementation of some of the programmes of the Parliament for the 2021 financial year.
They included the approval of the sum of GH¢523.6 million for Parliament, GH¢854,062,706 for the Energy Ministry and GH¢2,102,103,946 for the Defence Ministry.
