Minister for Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, Madam Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey, has expressed disquiet about her government's new policy on internally Generated Funds (IGF) utilization and is leading a crusade for its reversal.
According to her, the decision will affect the smooth and effective running of her ministry because the ministry uses its IGF for infrastructure development and other activities and considers the policy detrimental.
She is therefore pushing for 11% retention.
She argued that the Foreign Ministry is expected to receive GH149,831,338.93 from its missions abroad, however, the decision to set a ceiling of GH51.570,645 is in contravention of the 100% IGF retention by the ministry.
According to her, the reduction from 100% to 66% will greatly affect other reliable sources of the ministry's fund.
Information gathered by the Daily Democrat indicates that other institutions are kicking against the decision because such monies are their organizations.
They claim that although the cash is sometimes misappropriated by unscrupulous officials, reducing what is already not enough will end up crippling those institutions.
They further argued that funding from government purse alone is not adequate and at times its allocation delays hence the IGF acts as stop gap to ensure the continued operation of ministries and agencies.
The IGF also serves as collateral for them to acquire loans to expand or improve operations, which generates enough to pay off the loans.
The ripple effects of the new directive will be the huge non-performing loans to banks and financial institutions that have been guaranteed with IGF funds.
Some financial experts argued that before such a crucial decision least be given at least one year moratorium to allow them clear their books or renegotiate with their debtors.
They reiterated the need to be circumspect in the wholesale implementation of the decision and will impact negatively on their operations.
Generally they all see the decision to be inimical to their operations and are calling on the Finance Ministry to rethink the consequences of implementing the measure and as quickly as possible reverse the decision.
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