The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration is seeking to increase the passport application fee from GHc100 to GHc 644.
The sector Minister, Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey said this in an interview with the state-owned Graphic Online.
“Ghanaians pay just about GH¢100 for a passport, to produce one passport booklet, it costs GH¢400, which means that for every passport that an applicant acquires, the government has to put in GH¢300 and this is not sustainable, she said.
Speaking on the floor of Parliament before the approval of a GH¢1.127 million budget estimate for her ministry, Ayorkor Botchwey noted that the proposal is currently being considered by the Committee on Subsidiary Legislation.
“On the cost of passports, it is not sustainable, therefore, I will plead with this honourable house to look at the issue for us. It is already before the subsidiary legislation committee, and I’m hoping that Ghanaians will pay realistic prices for passports. At the moment, passports don’t serve as IDs, we have national ID cards. Therefore, those who need passports are those who need them to travel, and I don’t think that they would want us to continue to subsidize it.”
The Ministry earlier hinted about a possible rise in passport application fees, citing production costs and higher charges by other countries in the sub-region as the reasons for the imminent increment.
This was disclosed by the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, Kwaku Ampratwum-Sarpong.
Addressing a press conference in Accra on Tuesday, November 28, he said “Liberia charges $50, we charge $8, meaning we have to subsidize every passport. So the money to buy the printers is used to subsidize the passports… And also, we are thinking of upgrading our passport from biometric to chip-embedded.
“So the chip-embedded version is going to cost more. If we continue charging at $8, we will continue to face the problems that we are having at the passport office… So we have to raise the fees,” he said.