Minister for Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey, has appealed to Parliament to approve an increase in passport application fees to GH₵400.
According to her, the amount of GH₵100 charged to Ghanaians for passport application is unrealistic, since it costs more to produce the document.
Speaking during the consideration of budget estimates for her Ministry, Madam Botchwey said “Mr Speaker, on the issue of the cost of passport, it goes without saying that it is not sustainable. We cannot sustain this and therefore I would plead with this honourable house to look at the issue for us.
“It is already before the Subsidiary Legislation Committee and I am hoping that Ghanaians will pay realistic prices for passports.”
The Minister clarified that the passport was subsidised so all Ghanaians could acquire it when it served as a national document. However, since it is now solely for travel purposes, citizens should be allowed to bear the full cost of printing.
“Today passports are no longer IDs – they don’t serve as ID’s. We have the national ID card and therefore those who need passports need it to travel and therefore I don’t believe that they would want us to continue to subsidise it,” she argued.
On November 28, the Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Kwaku Ampratwum Sarpong in a press briefing made a case for an upward adjustment of the fees for passport applications.
He argued that the cost of the travel document has been heavily subsidised by the government hence the inability of the passport office to invest in other areas of service delivery.
Currently, a citizen pays an average of $8 for an ordinary passport as compared to the second least paying country, Liberia, which pays an average of $40.
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