A report by civil society group Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) on judgment debts spanning 2000 to 2019 titled: ‘A 20-year Review of Judgment Debt Payments in Ghana: Impact, Causes and Remedies’, has revealed that a total of GHS1.9 billion of the Ghanaian taxpayers’ money went down the drain as judgment debts.

These judgment debts, according to the report sighted by ClassFMonline.com, “arose from alleged contractual breaches, failure to promptly pay compensations for compulsory land acquisitions by the state/government, and alleged tortuous/statutory breaches committed by public officials in the course of their public duties”. 

The report said: “In equivalent 2019 cedi terms, the total judgment debts paid from 2000 – 2019 amounted to GHS1,893.7 million, equivalent to about 135 per cent of new multilateral loans contracted by the government in 2019, 112 per cent of total central government grants received in 2019, and about 30 per cent of total health expenditures in 2019”. 

Of the total, the report said "judgment debt payments arising from contractual breaches" amounted to "GHS1,384.7 million (73 per cent), GHS479.2 million from failure to promptly pay compensation for compulsory land acquisition by the state/government (25 per cent), and GHS29.9 million (about 1.5 per cent) from tortuous/statutory breaches by public officials”. 

The report pointed out that judgment debts have occurred under every government, stating: “Evidence from the Sole Commissioner’s report shows that illegal abrogation of contracts involving huge amounts of money, which is part of judgment debts arising from contractual breaches, have mostly followed political transitions”. 

The SCJ report observed that “most judgment debts occur due to negligence, blatant disregard for public procurement laws, illegal abrogation of contracts, corrupt activities by public officials in their line of duty, all of which have resulted in the payment of huge sums from the public coffers”.

Read the full document below:

The report noted that while these findings were based on actual payments made between 2000 and 2019, “our review of the Auditor-General’s reports from 2013 to 2019 also showed that staggering amounts of judgment debts awarded against the state remain outstanding”.

For example, it mentioned, “in 2017 alone, the amount outstanding as shown in the Auditor-General’s report was GHS411.6 million”.