This Publication is part of BudgIT Foundation’s Budget Analysis Series. It simplifies national budget and other financial documents to empower citizens to demand good governance and better service delivery.
ANALYSIS OF AUDITOR GENERAL’S REPORT ON COVID-19 EXPENDITURE, MARCH 2020-JUNE 2022
The Auditor General of Ghana carried out a special audit on the Government of Ghana’s COVID-19 transactions for the period March 2020 to June 2022 in accordance with the statutory mandate under Article 187 of the 1992 Constitution.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) declared COVID-19 as a pandemic on 11 March 2020, and Ghana recorded its first two cases on 12 March 2020. As a result, the President of Ghana formed a task force to develop a strategy to ensure that the Country was not overwhelmed by the pandemic. The strategy assessed the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the economy
of Ghana and designed measures to address its immediate impact.
Extract from GNPC- Genser Contract
Ghana Gas has the largest pipeline complex in the country. Roughly $1.6 billion of equity and public/ publicly-guaranteed debt have gone into this huge infrastructure base. All the offshore pipelines that bring the gas from the sea to land (the most expensive form of gas transmission) belong to Ghana Gas. Yet Ghana Gas is paying an average wholesale price of about $5.4 per unit for the gas it retails. Ghana Gas provides clear local benchmarks for how to value the contribution of pipeline infrastructure to cost buildup.
In 2020, Genser Energy signed a deal to buy natural gas from GNPC at a cost of $2.79 per Metric Million British Thermal Unit (MMBtu). “MMBtu” is a unit used to measure gas flow in the gas industry. This was after it had committed in 2018 to buy gas at $6.5 from Ghana Gas if it succeeds in being classified as an “strategic industrial consumer” and if not then at $7.29. When Ghana Gas tried in February 2019 to get the Energy Commission, a key regulator, to designate Genser as a strategic consumer and thus to justify the lower price, Energy Commission refused.