MPs Owe Ghc300,000 to private banks – Majority Leader

• Posted on January 22, 2014
• by Nana Kwesi Coomson
• Comment

Majority Leader and MP for Nandom, Dr. Benjamin Kunbour says he and all of his colleagues in Parliament owe Ghc300,000 each to private banks.

He was reacting to a statement by the Minority Leader Osei Kyei Mensah Bonsu on the floor of Parliament during their closing remarks on the 2014 Budget debate.

The Minority Leader had said that Ghc8 billion was added on to the public debt every year over the past five years, and a major portion of the debt is from the domestic market.

Osei Kyei Mensah Bonsu noted that government has a penchant for borrowing, and per the quantum of the current national debt, each Ghanaian, including newly born babies owe Ghc2000.

In response to that assertion, Majority Leader Dr. Kumbuor accused the Minority Leader of doing myopic arithmetic by not telling Ghanaians whether the debt stock begun building up from 1957 or from 2013.

He also asked if the Minority Leader captured all Ghanaians, dead and alive from 1957 till date in calculating how much each person owes.

On the contrary, Dr. Kunbour said “I am very clear in my mind that we those in this house alone, our debt portfolio and exposure is more than Ghc2500. I am almost sure that everybody sitting here has not less than some Ghc30,000 added to the Ghc2,000 debt the minority leader has eloquently calculated.”

MP for Asene Manso Akroso, Yaw Owusu Boateng raised concerns about the Majority Leader’s claims that each MP owes Ghc300,000 and asked him to apologize to his colleague MPs for exposing them to public ridicule.

He explained that an MP’s debt to a bank is a private matter and not public business so there was no need for the Majority Leader to have put it in the public domain.

The Asene Manso Akroso MP further argued that the subject for debate was about the public debt stock, which has nothing to do with each MP’s private transaction with his bank.

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