The Mahama administration finds money for corruption ventures but that is never the case when it comes to honouring its constitutional obligations, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia has said.

“Whenever this government feels they need to find the money for anything – whether its judgment debt payment, or bus branding or whatever, they find the money very easily – but when it comes to their obligations to people like ECG, to the BDCs, to VRA and so on, somehow they suddenly don’t find the money,” the running mate to the opposition NPP’s flagbearer Nana Akufo-Addo said Friday June 10 in an interview.

Government is currently attempting to retrieve some GHS51.2 million it paid businessman Alfred Woyome as judgment debt some year ago following a Supreme Court ruling to that effect.

The Woyome case was one of several murky judgment debt cases sat upon by the Sole Commissioner Justice Apau, who was appointed by the President to comb through such cases as part of efforts to save the country from doling out huge sums of money to individuals and institutions who were laying claims to such as a result of dealings they had had with the state in the past.

Dr Bawumia’s reference to bus branding is in connection with an overpriced controversial GHS3.6 million contract awarded by the government to local firm Smartty's Management Limited for the rebranding of 116 state buses. Chief of Staff Julius Debrah, based upon recommendations of Attorney General Marietta Brew Appiah-Oppong after a re-look of the contract, ordered Smartty’s to refund GHS1.9 million.

Dr Bawumia, in his interview with Bernard Avle on the Citi Breakfast Show, said he found it befuddling that the government owed power distributor Electricity Company of Ghana close to GHS1billion, as well as the Bulk Oil Distributors (BDCs) and power producer Volta River Authority (VRA) crippling sums, which have pended for years, yet was able to find money to pump into corrupt ventures rather than defray such debts so as to make the energy sector more efficient.