Parliament Refers GH¢68.7bn Government Arrears Audit to Public Accounts Committee for Probe

• Parliament refers GH¢68.7 billion government arrears audit report to the Public Accounts Committee for thorough investigation
• An audit found GH¢8.1 billion in fraudulent arrears from the Akufo-Addo administration, citing multiple irregularities
• GH¢45.4 billion was validated as legitimate obligations, while some amounts are pending additional verification processes

Parliament has referred a special audit report on GH¢68.7 billion in government arrears and payables to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) for investigation.

The audit found irregularities, falsified records and questionable payment claims valued at GH¢8.1 billion.

The report, presented to Parliament on Tuesday, March 10, was submitted by the Ministry of Finance through the Deputy Finance Minister, Thomas Nyarko Ampem.

It relates to the Ghana Audit Service report on arrears and payables as at the end of 2024.

According to the report, the Ghana Audit Service, working in collaboration with international professional services firms Ernst & Young (EY) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), conducted a verification and validation exercise on arrears submitted to the Finance Ministry by various ministries, departments and agencies.

Read also

EOCO freezes GH¢50 million in Chairman Wontumi’s accounts

The audit focused on unpaid Interim Payment Certificates, invoices and Bank Transfer Advices owed to contractors and suppliers.

Presenting highlights of the report to Parliament, Ampem outlined some of the irregularities and the reasons.

“A total of GH¢8.1 billion was rejected for various reasons, including unsupported documentation, duplication, overstatements, already-paid items, falsified store receipts advice and cases where no work had been done."

Despite the rejected claims, the audit validated GH¢45.4 billion as legitimate obligations, meaning the government is expected to settle those payments, subject to fiscal space and further verification processes.

The remaining portion of the claims is still undergoing further reconciliation and review.

What kind of fraud was uncovered in audit report?

Auditors uncovered transactions worth GH¢9.4 million supported by forged Stores Receipt Advices (SRAs) that had been used to justify requests for payment for goods that were not delivered at the time.

At the Ministry of Defence, this amounted to GH¢ 4.8 million. A contract between the Ministry of Defence and a company for vehicles intended for border surveillance and monitoring of the 2024 general election revealed that, despite the issuance of a Stores Receipt Advice dated October 12, 2024, the vehicles were never delivered.

Read also

"Every family deserves justice": CID renews investigations into disappearance of NDC executive, others

Similarly, the Judicial Service appeared to be caught in a web of falsified Stores Receipt Advice. While the Stores Receipt Advice dated October 25, 2024, claimed the receipt of 7 Toyota saloon cars, as soon as the audit was initiated, the supplier wrote to the Judicial Service on 10th April, 2025, indicating their inability to supply the said vehicles as scheduled.

The audit also found overpayments for the transport of grains in respect of the Dry Spell expenditure.

Under the Farmer Food Relief and Recovery Programme, a transportation company was contracted to transport 134,000 metric tonnes of maize and rice to farmers across the country at a contract sum of GH¢115.2 million.

Even though the company transported only 35,000 metric tonnes, which should have costed GH¢30.9 million, the company was paid GH¢50 million.

Ghanaians admit to offering bribes in poll

Meanwhile, YEN.com.gh reported earlier that a report from the Ghana Statistical Service had indicated that 18.4% of Ghanaians had admitted to giving a bribe in 2024.

The report also noted that men were more likely to engage in bribery than women when engaging with public officials, with the results of the poll going viral at the time.

Presenting findings from the Governance Series Wave 1 Report, GSS's Omar Seidu said that 55.7 per cent of the population had contact with public officials in the year.

Source: YEN.com.gh