The Ghana Football Association (GFA) is picking up positive credits for its work after the World Cup Commission was told by the Sports Ministry that the federation paid for the entire Black Stars preparation for the tournament in Brazil.
It was previously thought that the government of Ghana spent huge amounts of the tax payers’ money to prepare the team in Holland and the United States ahead of the competition in June.
The Black Stars played friendlies against Holland and South Korea in Rotterdam and Miami respectively where they camped ahead of the tournament.
But on Monday, it emerged at the Commission hearings that the Ghana Football Association took care of preparation costs of the Black Stars for 2014 World Cup from its resources and that government was spared the burden of bearing the costs involved in the team’s three week preparation in the run-up to the tournament.
This came to light while Mr. Prosper Kpasu, Chief Accountant of the Ministry was responding to questions from Moses Foh Amoaning, a Commission member, on the pre-tournament expenditure on the team which seemed to surprise the commission.
“That aspect of the budget was taken by the GFA. The GFA paid all the per diems relating to our friendlies; government didn’t pay anything on it,” Apasu told the commission.
“The GFA also paid for the hotels for both our games against the Netherlands in Rotterdam and Korea in the USA.”, he added.
The Chief Accountant also informed the Commission that the GFA also bore the costs of the air tickets from Ghana to the Netherlands and from the Netherlands to the USA and that the government was spared the costs of air travel in this particular instance.