Ghana Needs A Rigorous Pre-audit System And Accountability For Loan Application And Disbursement

I know parliament has a finance committee but do they have an audit committee too or does the finance committee undertake the audit functions as well since we can safely group audit under finance? I have doubts since we have Auditor General Department and Audit Service, I stand to be corrected though. I personally think these two audit institutions in Ghana are relegated to post audit (simply audit after expenditure). Pre-audit is audit before the expenditure is incurred or paid for. From what I have observed I think the finance committee makes input into whatever finance expenditure government wants to embark on but I don't know if it is thouroughly audited, something I think Auditor General should be doing before even finance committee of parliament should consider. I don't think it will be right for Auditor General to audit after finance committee has given approval so the audit should come first before finance committee considers it's deliberation and approval (my thoughts though).

As of 13/04/2020 Rwanda's population was 12,878,599 million people and Ghana's population was 30,927,496 million people (new births can change figure). If Rwanda goes in for $109.4 million loan to fight Covid-19, a country that is properly feeding it's citizens and providing more reliefs for it's citizens than Ghana then how much credit line should Ghana have gone in for considering how majority of the masses have not even been affected by government policies of catering for the poor during this crisis? Should it not be a little over double of the the Rwandan loan figure of about $262.7 million? Based on what indicies and statistics do we go in for $1 billion a figure in excess of Rwanda's loan and population requirements by a staggering amount of $737.3 million?

Someone help me address this concern. Per our MOH figure only 566 people have been affected as of today. Let's be a bit pessimistic and tripple this figure as we are expecting the numbers to increase due to further testing and contact tracing, do we need $1 billion to treat tripple of this affected cases? I don't want to write any figure before someone says I have conjured a new Covid-19 figure for Ghana. I know the further argument that will come up which is going to be mostly economic, like tax reliefs, financing businesses something finance minister is already seeking Ghs1.2 from finance committee in parliament to deal with, medical supplies etc but do we need a whole $1 billion to do that? Unless this loan figure can properly be explained to us I don't think we are being fair to Ghanaians by piling up this much debt for future generations to come and pay.

And by the way Ghs2 million a day to feed poor people in soceity is just too much. How is this money accounted for? How much is used for what? Ghanaians deserve accountability. I think Ghana needs to adopt a pre-audit system in applying for loans from international organization. Ministry of finance should not go in for the loans and come and spend before Auditor General goes to do a post audit. Applications for loans must be vetted by Auditor General, that is the accountability we want in this country. Go and look at the kind of food being given to people with this Ghs2 million a day, multiply it by 90 days which is 3 months and see how much we will supposedly spend. This Ghs2 million a day is likely to even more than quadruple if Covid-19 should spread to the other regions not under lockdown.

Just thinking aloud. More to come.