Minister of Trade and Industry Kobina Tahir Hammond has said his predecessor, Alan Kyerematen did not lie in his comment on the number of factories under the One District One Factory (1D1F) programme that received money through the Exim Bank.
The Adansi-Asokwa lawmaker said there was no lie in what Mr Kyerematen put out.
Speaking on the Ghana Tonight show with Alfred Ocansey on TV3 Wednesday, June 14, he explained “Sometime in 2022, my predecessor Alan Kyerematen was asked specific questions in Parliament, about how much money has been facilitated or spent by the government through this specification. At that point, the figure was 273 million, he indicated that this much money was given out to Exim Bank. The 273million that I have indicated would have been given to the 15 participating banks. Exim Bank share of this money was 14,407,000
“The question to Mr Kyerematen was that, you have indicated that 14 million was given to Exim Bank, we want a breakdown of how many companies benefited from the 14 million that Exim Bank was given.
“So [Mr Kyerematen] and his officers contact Exim Bank and they are told that the figure, as stood at the time of the answer, was given at 60.
“So yesterday, I was asked by Parliament to answer a specific question, this time I am asked to provide not the names of the companies but the corresponding amounts, so you will need to be able to place the figure on every single company.
“So I get them to check again from Exim Bank. We go back and we are told that yes, the money was actually 14,407,808.000 but it looks like there was mixed up, the figure for the companies we supplied the last time which is a total of 60 is not 60, it is 48.
“So I go to Parliament yesterday and I announce to Parliament that these are the figures but the companies involved which benefited were not 60 as previously announced but 48.
“These were the figures Exim Bank gave to Alan and gave me and now, all of a sudden, there is the hullabaloo about Alan being a liar, where is the lie in this?”
He further blamed Parliament for the struggles some factories under the One-District One-Factory Initiative are facing.
He said some of the incentives needed to be ratified to boost these factories have been left unattended to by the legislative arm of government.
“Let me tell you, horror of horrors, part of the problem also emanates from the Parliament of the Republic of Ghana,” he noted.
“Remember I am a senior member of the August House, so if I say that some of the problems are from there, I know what I am talking about.”
He mentioned the import waivers promised factories under the policy as one of the first incentives under the initiative that Parliament failed to approve.
“The only institution in the whole country mandated by the Constitution to be able to provide that kind of incentive is Parliament,” he admitted.
“The applications have been made through the Ministry [of Trade and Industry]. The Ministry handed these applications to the Finance Ministry. The Finance Ministry handed a good chunk of these to Parliament and for two years now, Parliament hasn’t been able to sit,” he said, expressing worry that even the Finance Committee has not decided on the matter let alone to be tabled before plenary.
“That’s the difficulty. As many as a 100 of these issues are still pending in Parliament. So, you see the difficulty.”