The Minister of Finance, Dr Cassiel Ato Forson, has called for a renewed national commitment to recover, protect and properly account for every cedi of public money.
Speaking in Tamale last Friday at an engagement on the 2025 Auditor-General’s Report with Regional Ministers and Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives (MMDCEs), Dr Forson said the country could no longer afford waste in the management of public resources.
The engagement, held on the theme: “Recovering Every Cedi”, was a gathering of key regional and local government leaders to strengthen financial accountability, improve compliance and ensure that public funds are used strictly for their intended purposes.
“Ladies and gentlemen, Ghana does not have the luxury of wasting public resources.
Every cedi already has a job waiting for it,” Dr Forson said.
“It can buy medicine, repair a classroom, desilt a drain, improve a market or maintain a feeder road.
So, when a cedi is wasted, left uncollected or poorly spent, somebody somewhere loses a service,” he stressed.
The Finance Minister said the theme must go beyond a conference slogan and become a practical discipline across all levels of government.
“‘Recovering Every Cedi’ cannot remain just a slogan on today’s banner.
It must become a way of working: collect what is due; protect what is collected; spend what is approved; account for what is spent; recover what is owed, and prevent it from happening again,” he stated.
Not just compliance
Dr Forson stressed that financial accountability was not only about compliance with audit rules, but about protecting services that directly affected the lives of citizens.
He said public funds must translate into visible improvements in communities, including better schools, roads, health facilities, markets, drainage systems and local infrastructure.
The Finance Minister urged Regional Ministers, MMDCEs and Coordinating Directors to take audit findings seriously, recover funds where necessary, close loopholes and strengthen internal controls to prevent future losses.
The meeting was attended by several Regional Ministers, including the Northern Regional Minister, Ali Adolf John; the Savannah Regional Minister, Salisu Be-Awuribe Issifu; the North East Regional Minister, Ibrahim Tia; the Upper West Regional Minister, Puozuing Charles Lwanga; the Oti Regional Minister, John Kwadwo Gyapong, and the Upper East Regional Minister, Akamugri Donatus Atanga.
The Northern Regional Minister praised the Finance Minister for what he described as a remarkable improvement in the release of the District Assemblies Common Fund (DACF) to Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs).
Mr John said the assemblies were now receiving significant releases under President John Dramani Mahama’s government, a development he said had brought relief and excitement to local authorities.
“The Common Fund that comes to the various assemblies, tell me in the history of Ghana when have you ever experienced such quantum of monies coming to the assembly,” he said quizzically.
The Northern Regional Minister said many MMDCEs were happy about the level of support reaching their assemblies, especially those who had taken time to understand the difficulties previous DCEs faced in accessing funds for development.
“Our MMDCEs who are here are very happy about what is happening in their assemblies, especially those of them who have taken the pain to know from those of us who have been DCEs before what we went through,” he said.
He stated that in the past, assemblies struggled to receive even the limited amounts promised to them, particularly over the last eight years.
“The monies that used to come, and especially in the past eight years, the money that was even promised them, that peanut that was promised them, was not even coming,” he stated.
The Northern Regional Minister said the situation had changed under President Mahama and Dr Forson’s stewardship at the Ministry of Finance.
“But under His Excellency John Dramani Mahama’s government, under the ministership of Dr Ato Forson, we have seen wonders being performed.
Hon., we are very, very happy about what we are experiencing so far,” he said.
