GFA must save for the future, Kotoko boss advises

The CEO of Asante Kotoko, Nana Yaw Amponsah, has asked the Ghana Football Association (GFA) to learn from the debilitating consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic and begin to save for the future.

While contributing to a debate on the projected expenditure of the association at their Ordinary Congress at the GFA Technical Centre at Prampram last Tuesday, the football administrator said it would not be prudent for the association to expend all the budgeted expenditure without a surplus.

“I observed that in the last budget we had a deficit and in the current proposed budget, total budget revenue is estimated at GH¢71,642,158.44 and then total budgeted expenditure is also GH₵71,642,158.44.

“For me, as an association we should be working towards saving for the future, considering what COVID-19 has done to us. If you look at the total budgeted expenditure, it is the same as the total budgeted revenue, so it smacks of an intent to spend every pesewa that we bring in and I don’t think it’s good for an association such as ours”.

Cost-cutting expenditure

He advised that instead of expending everything in the budget, the FA leadership should consider some cost-cutting measures in order to save part of the budgeted revenue for the future.

“I’d admonish the leadership to try and at least save about GHc5milion or GHc10 million this year on the proposed expenditure so that going forward we can build some good revenue in our account for the future rather than thinking of spending everything that comes in,” he cautioned.

Addo’s response

In response, Vice President of the FA, Mr Mark Addo, said the focus must not only be on expenditure but also the revenue because the idea was rather to raise more revenue to engage in more projects.

“We are coming from the normalisation. If you look at that normalisation budget, it was quite a stretch and also we had COVID coming in so some of the proposal that we have you notice that we have other sponsorship of about GH¢6m.

“So it’s not only the expenditure side that we should be looking at, we should be looking at the revenue side also because we have to bring in revenue to enable us to be able to spend so that’s why we have it that way but the idea is to generate more revenue as we can so we can engage in more projects for the benefit of the organisation.”