<<Print>>

Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta has asked opposers of the National Cathedral project to be measured in their criticisms.

According to him, the government is mindful of taxpayers’ money being used to support the building of the cathedral but will ensure that monies pumped into the construction are recouped within the shortest possible time after construction.

Ofori-Atta, who was speaking on GTV's Talking Point programme on Sunday, June 12, said poverty should not drive the nation to shun its religiosity - to build a monument that has huge investment potential.

“At any point in time when these buildings were built in Europe, was it ever the right time? How do we fund it will become the question. Is the executive mindful of the current situation?" he quizzed.

"We shouldn’t snuff out our religiousness or spirituality because we are poor. The Lord will understand if we put our widows-mite in there,” Ken Ofori-Atta stated.

The Finance Minister stated that the raging debate on the financial prudence and relevance of the National Cathedral is misguided.

To him, the cathedral is not costing the nation as much as has been speculated in the media.

“That question being asked is that are we spending money from state coffers? Is that too much to do because we are politicizing it. Do we really want to stop it? That is going to be my question.

“As a Minister of Finance, we are looking at resources and how much we put in there at every point in time that is sensible and so as we speak, we have spent less than one-thousandth of our expenditure on that,” he observed.

Ken Ofori-Atta stressed, “I am very confident of raising revenue to be able to fund this and then more importantly if I want to look into the economics of it, I truly see an overwhelming capacity that this will pay off. Typically, I am looking at an internal rate of return, so we should put this in mind.”

Controversies surrounding the National Cathedral were resuscitated after it emerged that the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, has released an amount of GH¢142 million for the construction of the National Cathedral in 2020.

In a social media post on Wednesday, June 8, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa noted that so far, ¢200 million illegal funds have been released to the project.