GHANA- Tuesday, July 21, 2020,/ https://africanpostonline.com/ Former Finance Minister has claimed that the NPP administration is using “oil money” to fund the Free Senior High School policy.
Speaking to Ghanaweb, the past minister called out to the now finance minister Ken Ofori-Atta to, in his mid year budget reading come this Thursday, July 23, 2020 to “give us the full cost of Free SHS because we know they are using oil money, and we know they use the sovereign bond, Annual Budget Funding Account (ABFA) part of it to finance Free SHS”.
He further claimed that the government borrows an amount of US$2 billion every year to fund the project.
“I don’t think they’ve told us that they are going to borrow for Free SHS. They said they will use their revenue so if they are borrowing as much as 2 billion for Free SHS, then they should tell the nation so that we know whether going forward, we are to borrow 2 billion every year for Free SHS,” he said.
He further called on the government to give a “full account of the oil money and the loan that they have received for Free SHS”.
His comments come on the back of the mid year budget expected to be read by the finance minister come Thursday, July 23, 2020, in parliament.
The Free SHS policy was the leading policy that gave power to the Akufo Addo led administration in 2016. Launching the project in 2017 the president said “ we are investing revenues from oil in one of the most ambitious social programmes in our country’s history – i.e. the Free Senior High School policy. In the 2018 budget, GH¢455.9million of petroleum revenues was allocated to the Free SHS programme”.
However, in May 2019, the government scrapped the policy from the list of policies funded by the oil cash-funded Annual Budget Funding Amount (ABFA).
The Annual Budget Funding Account (ABFA) is the account set up by the government that receives allocations from oil and gas revenue in support of government budgets.
In November 2019, the president said that he did not regret investing oil money in the free SHS policy.
He said “I don’t have any regrets whatsoever about committing the oil revenues of our country to preparing our nation for the future. It is the best, most efficient, most equitable way all of us can participate in those revenues.” The country has seen “1.2 million students currently in Senior High schools across the country, 400,000
more than the total number of students enrolled before the onset of Free SHS”, according to the president while speaking with members of staff and students of Mawuli Senior High School on Tuesday, 5th
November, 2019, the 2nd day of his 2-day working visit to the Volta Region. This Year’s West African Senior Secondary Certificate Examination (WASSCE) saw the first beneficiaries of the policy sit for the exams amidst cases of COVID-19 in schools.
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