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The Minority in parliament has dismissed claims by the Vice President that the immediate past government did not account for a GHC7 billion expenditure drawn from state coffers between 2014 and 2016.

At a press conference Wednesday, the Minority says the GHC7 billion expenditure is captured in a special government data system at the Finance Ministry which Dr Mahamudu Bawumia should be aware of.

The NDC MPs were reacting to claims by Dr Bawumia that the nearly four-weeks old government could not find GHC7billion.

"As we interrogated the data to see exactly why our public finances are in the state they are, we found that there is GHC7 billion of expenditure that has not been disclosed," he revealed government's findings whilst preparing the 2017 budget.

He wondered why data for the 2014/2015 and 2015/2016 fiscal years given the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) are not complete.

"Where have they [GHC7 billion] been hiding all these years?" he quizzed the audience.

But addressing a press conference in Accra, former Deputy Finance Minister Ato Forson says the expenditures were captured under a new financial management system called the Ghana Integrated Financial Management Information Systems (GIFMIX) which the current government does not understand.

He says previously, it took three to six months for government expenditures to appear on government database as arrears that the state should pay. But under GIFMIX, expenditures are captured immediately, hence the GHC7 billion figure.

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