Accra: Every year, Ghana's Auditor-General submits a report to Parliament on how public money was spent and accounted for in the year under review. The report usually flags irregularities, including money that was lost, unaccounted for, unrecovered, or exposed to loss across ministries, state institutions, district assemblies, schools, and universities. The report gets discussed for a few days, sometimes weeks, and then attention moves on until the next one is released.
According to Ghana Web, Auditdata Gh set out to change that by collecting every Auditor-General report published from 2010 to 2025 - 65 reports in all - across five separate audit streams and bringing them together for analysis. The platform breaks the numbers down by sector and tracks which government was in power at the time each irregularity was recorded. This report looks at what the combined figures show and how money has been lost over the last 16 years.
The analysis reveals that Ghana's Auditor-General has flagged a combined US$19.96 billion in financial irregularities in the public accounts between the 2010 and 2025 financial years. In cedi terms, the same figures add up to GHS129.8 billion. Broken down by administration, the NPP was in office for the financial years responsible for US$16.22 billion (GHS111.98 billion) of the total, across 40 reports. The NDC, in office from 2010 to 2016 and again from 2025, was responsible for US$3.74 billion (GHS17.82 billion) across 25 reports. On this reading, the NPP years account for 81% of everything the Auditor-General has flagged since 2010.
Irregularities are attributed to the government that was in office during the financial year that was audited, not the year the report was published. The coverage problem is significant, as the Auditor-General's Office does not audit the same set of institutions every year, with reports published consistently only from 2015 onward.
When broken down by type of irregularity, one category makes up most of the total. Outstanding debts and unrecovered loans account for US$13.46 billion or 67.4% of the total. Tax irregularities, cash irregularities, contract irregularities, procurement and stores, payroll irregularities, and rent make up the rest of the flagged amounts.
Furthermore, three-quarters of every audited cedi lost since 2010 sits in the state-owned enterprise and statutory institution sector. The single largest report in the analysis is the FY2021 audit of Public Boards, which recorded GHS17.48 billion (US$2.91 billion) in one year, in one stream.
The figures indicate that losses are concentrated, not spread evenly. They are growing, though at a slower rate in real terms than the cedi figures alone suggest, and are repetitive, with the same categories appearing again in successive years. This may be the most crucial finding for Parliament to consider, emphasizing that noticing the problem has not led to change.
Every figure in this report comes from a published Report of the Auditor-General on the Public Accounts of Ghana, sourced from the Ghana Audit Service's publications page. Totals and category subtotals were taken from each report's summary of irregularities and checked against the narrative text of the report.
The analysis provided by Auditdata Gh offers a comprehensive examination of financial irregularities in Ghana's public accounts, highlighting areas of concern and the need for improved financial governance and accountability.