Isaac Adongo, Member of Parliament for Bolgatanga Central
Isaac Adongo, Member of Parliament for Bolgatanga Central and a board member of the Bank of Ghana, says Ghana’s recent fourth review with the IMF has yielded positive signs, though the road to economic recovery is far from over.
“The IMF is comfortable with our trajectory. We’ve met critical benchmarks and introduced bold reforms. That’s why we’re expecting the next tranche in June,” he said in a detailed interview on GHOne TV monitored by MyNewsGh.
Adongo admitted that the current administration inherited a massive arrears crisis, with previously undisclosed commitments swelling the public debt.
“We discovered over 45 billion in arrears—more than what the IMF had assumed. One agency alone had commitments exceeding 21 billion without financial clearance,” he revealed.
To address this, Adongo said the government has amended the Public Procurement Act, now empowering the Public Procurement Authority (PPA) to deny procurement approvals without proper financial clearance from the Ministry of Finance.
“We now have a procurement policeman. If you show up without clearance, you’re turned away. That’s how we’re controlling expenditure,” he stressed.
He added that reforms have also extended to state institutions like the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), which can no longer make purchases without ministerial concurrence, even when spending from their own balance sheets.
Adongo further hinted at a possible overhaul of audit procedures for state-owned enterprises. “We’re asking how ECG’s auditors missed the biggest risk in its operations—procurement of imported items. We can’t afford rubber-stamp audits anymore,” he stated.
For Adongo, these policy changes mark a shift in accountability and control across the board. “We are finally plugging the loopholes and managing the country with discipline,” he concluded.