President John Mahama’s decision to scrap fuel allowances for political appointees could save Ghana over GH¢121 million in four years.
According to Economic Policy Advisor Dr. Sharif Mahmud Khalid, the savings could fund hundreds of health and education projects across the country.
Speaking on JoyNews’ PM Express on Tuesday, July 15, Dr. Sharif said a rough estimate using fuel consumption data from GOIL showed that if 1,000 government vehicles—comprising 500 saloon cars and 500 4x4s—were using 50 liters of fuel per week per vehicle, Ghana could save “probably about a total of 2.5 million plus a month and 30 million plus a year.”
He stressed these were conservative projections.
“The fleet could be more than 1,000, but I’m just using 1,000 as a benchmark figure here to see what we could accumulate,” he explained.
Using a four-year outlook, Dr. Sharif pegged the potential savings at “GH¢121 plus million in four years,” and offered a snapshot of what such an amount could mean in concrete terms for development.
“If you look at these figures of four years, we’re probably talking about, let’s say, a maternity block for a hospital or clinic costs probably about GH¢1.5 million… we could probably get an average of 81 of them out of the savings,” he said.
He went further, stating that based on current unit cost assumptions, the same savings could build 303 CHPS compounds or 121 six-unit classroom blocks. “That is, if you use 1,000 fleets, 500 being saloon, 500 being 4×4… So there’s some real justification to what it is,” he said.
Though he clarified that the figures were not exact government projections, Dr. Sharif said they were meant to give Ghanaians “the holistic picture of what expectation we could have, and the savings we could make if we actually adhere to this policy.”
He emphasised that these examples were not declarations of government plans, but rather illustrations of the scale of development potential Ghana could unlock by cutting wasteful expenditure.
“This is what I did in the studio, using GOIL’s figures… I’m sure subsequently, the President and the government communication machinery will be coming out to say, this is what we’ll use the money for,” Dr. Sharif concluded.
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