….MPs’ Reported GH¢30,000 Salary Towers over Minimum Wage as 2025 Pay Gap Widens!
Accra, September 8, 2026 — The widening gulf between the remuneration of Ghana’s political officeholders and
the country’s lowest-paid workers has come under renewed scrutiny following fresh reports on Members of
Parliament’s salaries and the latest increases in the national daily minimum wage.
An analysis of Ghanaian remuneration published in 2025 put the monthly basic salary of an ordinary Member of
Parliament at approximately GH¢28,017, based on the recommendations of the Professor Yaa Ntiamoa-Baidu
Committee covering the 2017–2021 period. Other contemporary estimates placed parliamentary remuneration in the
region of GH¢28,000 to GH¢36,000, excluding allowances and other benefits.
At the same time, Ghana’s National Tripartite Committee increased the national daily minimum wage from
GH¢18.15 in 2024 to GH¢19.97 in 2025, representing a 10 per cent increase. The new rate took effect from March
1, 2025.
The figures expose a striking disparity.
Using the 2025 minimum wage of GH¢19.97 per day and a conventional 27-day working month, a minimum-wage
worker would earn approximately GH¢539.19 per month. Against an MP's reported basic monthly salary of
GH¢28,017, the MP's basic pay was therefore equivalent to approximately 52 months of minimum-wage earnings.
Put differently, a worker paid the statutory minimum would need to work for more than four years to earn the
equivalent of one month of an MP's basic salary.
The gap widens under the new reported salary structure
The issue became even more striking in August 2026 when JoyNews Research and Data Analyst Caleb Ziblim
disclosed that MPs were now earning approximately GH¢60,000 a month in basic salary, excluding allowances,
under a new remuneration structure which took effect from 2025.
According to reports by Ghanaguardian, YEN.com.gh and GHnow, Ziblim said MPs and other political
officeholders had earned around GH¢30,000 a month up to 2024, before the new structure effectively doubled the
basic salary to approximately GH¢60,000.
The analyst's figure has not, however, been accompanied by a publicly available official parliamentary salary
schedule establishing GH¢60,000 as the basic salary of every MP. It is therefore more accurate to describe
GH¢60,000 as a figure reported by Ziblim and subsequently reported by several Ghanaian media
organisations, rather than as an independently verified official payroll figure.
Nevertheless, if the reported figure is correct, the disparity with ordinary workers is extraordinary.
Minimum wage rises by only GH¢1.80 in 2026
The minimum-wage side of the equation tells a very different story.
For 2026, the National Tripartite Committee agreed to a further 9 per cent increase, taking the national daily
minimum wage from GH¢19.97 to GH¢21.77, effective January 1, 2026. The increase amounts to only GH¢1.80
per day.
On a 27-day working month, GH¢21.77 per day produces approximately GH¢587.79 per month.
Against the reported GH¢60,000 monthly basic salary of an MP, the ratio is approximately:
GH¢60,000 ÷ GH¢587.79 = 102 times.
Thus, on the reported figures, an MP's basic monthly salary is equivalent to about 102 months of minimum-wage
earnings.
A Ghanaian worker earning the statutory minimum wage would therefore require approximately 8½ years of
minimum-wage income to equal one month of an MP's reported basic salary.
And the GH¢60,000 figure does not include allowances.
The 2025–2026 minimum-wage increase
The comparison can be reduced to four numbers:
Year National daily minimum wage Approx. 27-day monthly equivalent Reported MP basic salary
2025 GH¢19.97 GH¢539.19 ~GH¢28,017–GH¢30,000
2026 GH¢21.77 GH¢587.79 ~GH¢60,000*
*The GH¢60,000 figure is the amount publicly attributed to JoyNews Research and Data Analyst Caleb Ziblim and
reported by several media outlets; it should be distinguished from an officially published Parliamentary salary
schedule.
The minimum wage therefore rose by 9 per cent between 2025 and 2026, while the reported parliamentary basic
salary rose from approximately GH¢30,000 to GH¢60,000 — a 100 per cent increase, if the reported figures are
confirmed.
Article 71 remains at the centre of the controversy
The debate over parliamentary remuneration is not new. Ghana has for years wrestled with the cost and structure of
remuneration for officeholders covered by Article 71 of the 1992 Constitution.
In 2017, a detailed analysis published by Citi FM of the then-approved Article 71 remuneration package showed that
an MP's approved monthly salary had risen to GH¢19,430, while the lowest-paid worker on the Single Spine Salary
Structure was reported to be earning only GH¢207.90 per month. The analysis also calculated substantial end-of-
term benefits for Article 71 officeholders.
The controversy resurfaced repeatedly over the years, including the 2018 “double salary” controversy involving
MPs who had simultaneously served as Ministers. MyJoyOnline reported at the time that some affected politicians
received approximately GH¢32,162 per month from the two streams of remuneration.
In 2024, calls for reform intensified. Stakeholders including organised labour and professional bodies argued for a
fundamental review of Article 71 and described the existing system as creating an unjustified class distinction in
remuneration.
A widening question of fairness
The figures raise a fundamental question about the relationship between political remuneration and the economic
circumstances of the people whom Parliament represents.
In 2025, a worker at the national minimum wage received GH¢19.97 for a day's work. In 2026, that worker receives
GH¢21.77.
An MP's reported basic salary, meanwhile, is now approximately GH¢60,000 per month.
The contrast is even more pronounced when the full package of parliamentary allowances, facilities and other
benefits is taken into account.
The question, therefore, is no longer simply whether Members of Parliament should be adequately remunerated for
public service. It is whether a democratic society can sustain such a vast difference between the remuneration of its
political representatives and the statutory income floor imposed on millions of ordinary workers.
Ghana's national minimum wage is supposed to represent the minimum amount necessary to remunerate a worker
for a day's labour. Yet the reported basic salary of one Member of Parliament is now equivalent to more than 2,750
days of minimum-wage earnings at the 2026 rate.
That is more than ten years of 27-day working months.
The numbers do not necessarily establish that MPs are overpaid; remuneration must also take account of the
responsibilities, expenses and demands of public office. But they undeniably demonstrate the extraordinary distance
between the economic circumstances of the political class and those at the bottom of Ghana's wage structure.
And that distance gives fresh relevance to the increasingly familiar question:
What would Ghanaian politics look like if those who make decisions about wages and the cost of living had to
live on the same minimum wage as the workers affected by those decisions?
