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Publish all specific cases of ¢2.75bn PPA savings – NDC challenges Akufo Addo

The largest opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has challenged President Akufo Addo to cause the publication of all the specific cases of ¢2.75bn savings made by the Public Procurement Authority(PPA).

According to the President “in spite of the recent happenings at the PPA surrounding its suspended acting CEO, GH¢2.75 billion has been saved for the public exchequer from January 2017 to July 2019 as a result of the PPA reviewing contracts brought before it for approval either under sole-sourcing or restrictive tendering procedures.”

This, the President stressed, is in sharp contrast to the performance of the PPA in the years before 2017, when approvals were given as a matter of course, and no savings achieved at all.

President Akufo-Addo made this known on Monday, 9th September 2019, when he delivered a speech at the 2019 Bar Conference of the Ghana Bar Association, in Takoradi, in the Western Region.

“An isolated case in point is the contract awarded in 2016 for the supply of two hundred and fifty thousand (250,000) bags of ‘Asaasewura’ cocoa fertilizer. The contract sum amounted to $11.5 million, i.e. $46 per bag of fertiliser. This same contract, under my administration, was reviewed by the PPA in 2018 for $7.87 million, i.e. $31.50 per bag, resulting in savings to the exchequer of $3.62 million,” he added.

The President continued, “There are many such examples. Indeed, only 47% of applications for restricted tender and 56% of applications for sole-sourcing were approved in 2017, as opposed to approvals of 99% for restricted tender and 96% for sole sourcing in 2016”.

But the NDC in a Press conference addressed by its General Secretary Johnson Asiedu Nketia on Tuesday, September 10, 2019 contested the President’s claim of ¢2.75bn being saved.

“We wish to submit that this claim is false and challenge the President to publish all the specific cases of savings. Let him tell us that this contract was going to be sole-sourced we blocked it this is what we’ve saved and the total is GHC2.75 billion, let him come out and tell us. We note that the request for full disclosure on this matter has been outstanding for two years and the reason why the President has failed to show proof of this claim is that in fact there’s no evidence to back it. In any event, how can any reasonable person trust the A.B. Adjei led PPA in the face of the Contract for Sale scandal. The person who is supposed to compile the sole-sourcing contracts and indicate the savings if he himself is involved is he going to put his name there?”

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