Show proof of GH₵49 bn payment – Chamber of Construction Industry to Finance Minister

The Ghana Chamber of Construction Industry said the Finance Minister, Dr Amin Adam did not say the truth when he said the government has paid GH₵49 billion to contractors in the country. Finance Minister Dr Mohammed Amin Adam, said during a media briefing on May 24, 2024, that GH¢49 billion has been paid to road contractors.

Dr Amin Adam said payments to the contractors and independent power producers put a strain on the currency that is why the Cedi is weak against the United States dollar.

“complaints of no money…we don’t hear that anymore because we have paid and paid contractors. I think we have spent some GH₵49 billion. Same time last year, we did GH₵41 billion and so this demonstrates there’s a lot of Cedi liquidity in the market and we have seen some people looking for US dollars to buy with the Cedis that we have put out there,” he said at the media briefing.

But Emmanuel Cherry, CEO of the GCCI said “the debt portfolio that you and I’ve been talking about, it is not up to that magnitude. Which means there is another leg of construction that is going on that the minister is trying to speak to that we don’t know.”

He said his outfit will “interrogate the books properly and come out with the accurate figures accordingly because this is very outrageous.”

Now the Chamber has come out to explain further. Emmanue Cherry said there are “donor-funded projects that their portfolios are quite high.” He, however, added that “almost all those projects have been abandoned by contractors as we speak. If you go to Kwabenya to Brekuso stretch, If you go on that road now you’ll see that there’s nothing happening, all because the contractor has not been paid. If you go to Nungua-Teshie Drive, you’ll see the contractor not on site because he has not been paid.”

Emmanuel Cherry questioned which contractors the money went to when a majority of them had abandoned their project sites due to non-payment.

 “If the government claims it has paid GH₵49 billion to contractors, who are these contractors he has purportedly paid, that they are not at the various sites for the continuation of this project, especially in an election year when the government needs those particular projects to campaign with…it’s outrageous.”