Chief Executive of the National Food Buffer Stock Company, Hanan Abdul Wahab has said his outfit received late payment invoices due to the delay in the documentation process, thus affecting payment to the National Food Suppliers Association.
He said the payment warrant for 2023 has been released to the Controller and Accountant General’s Department to aggregate the funds for payment.
Addressing the media in Accra, Mr Wahab said his office is working to create a suitable and advanced payment system to run the business smoothly.
” The issue has to do with 2023 arrears. So yesterday, being 10 of July, my office is still receiving invoices from the suppliers for 2022. The invoices of the suppliers from previous years are still trickling in.
The system we are operating has contributed to the delay in payments,” Mr Wahab said.
A spokesperson for the Food Suppliers Association, Kwaku Amedume said, although the Minister of Education has asserted to have received 283 million cedis in 2022 to the Buffer Stock Company for payment, over arrears in 2022, members of the National Food Suppliers Association are yet to receive payment of the said amount.
” In a meeting with the Minister of Education, he indicated that One Hundred million cedis were released in 2021 to Buffer Stock, 283 million in 2022, and 35 million to Buffer Stock in 2023.
We are a bit alarmed because we’ve been chasing Buffer Stock for our monies for the past two years, especially in 2022. According to the Minister, the monies would not be enough to give us full payments.”
” We did supplied but were never paid a dime. If they do not pay us enough, how are we going to pay our creditors?” Kwaku Amedume asked.
