The Cocoa Marketing Board, (COCOBOD) is demanding over thirty ghost cocoa roads from the previous National Democratic Congress (NDC) government which they claim gave out on contracts.
The Chief Executive Officer of the Cocoa Marketing Board, Joseph Boahen Aidoo, has revealed that the previous Mahama-led National Democratic Congress administration awarded road contracts to the tune of GHC5.16 billion to party cronies, with some of contracts relating to roads that did not exist.
“For the first time in the history of Ghana, the NDC had introduced ghost cocoa roads in Ghana,” Mr Boahen Aidoo stated yesterday at a press conference.
According to Mr Boahen Aidoo, his outfit inherited cocoa road debts to the tune of GHC3.52 billion upon assumption of office in 2017, out of which the total budgetary allocation of GHC1.64 billion was earmarked for the cocoa road projects between 2014/2015 and 2016/2017. The NDC government, he said, awarded contracts to the tune of GHC5.16 billion, above the budgeted figure by GHC3.52 billion.
“It is worth nothing that this reckless commitment above the budgeted amount was questioned by the Public Procurement Authority in December 2016 when Cocobod needed to seek approval to award additional contracts and the authority inquired about the availability of budgetary provision to enable it approve the requested contracts awards,” the chief executive said.
According to him, the NDC government, at the time, justified the road contracts in a response to the PPA.
His comment comes on the back of Minority press conference at Sefwi Bodi that NPP Government has directed all the contractors working on the 230 cocoa roads to stop.
The Minority in their press conference stated that they left $1.8 billion a syndicated loan but Chief Executive of COCOBOD Joseph Boahen Aidoo says the NDC as at 15th December had used $1.4billion
The minority added that the remaining $400 million was cleared from the account on 20th December to pay debts so as at now there is no money in the syndicated fund.
But Mr Boahen Aidoo retorted, saying the Mahama administration took loans in the name of COCOBOD and used the money to pay the judgement debt.
“The President Mahama/Opuni tenure used export duty payments from COCOBOD as a conduit to siphon funds for activities not related to cocoa,” he said.
“This amount was taken from COCOBOD in the name of “exercise” duty (in the word of the then Deputy Minister of Finance – a Board member of COCOBOD Casiel Ato Forson). The payment under export duty was to make it appear legitimate,” he added.
Listen to the COCOCBOD boss
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