The Memorandum to the Fines (Penalty Units) Bill, dated July 5, 1999, and presented to the Second Parliament of the Fourth Republic of Ghana by the then Attorney-General and Minister for Justice, had the sole purpose of establishing a legislative mechanism intended to avoid stating actual fine amounts in currency units.
The concept was that actual fine amounts in enactments should be expressed in penalty units.
This had the advantage of eliminating the need for constant amendment of specific sums of money stated in enactments as fines, which often became necessary because of fluctuations in currency value.
Consequently, clause 1 of the Fines (Penalty Units) Act, 2000 (Act 572), provides that all fines in enactments are, in future, to be stated in terms of penalty units.
Before its enactment, fines under various statutes were generally expressed in fixed monetary amounts.
With fluctuations in economic conditions and the associated inflation, those fines and penalties often became ineffective, resulting in a loss or reduction of their deterrent value.
This, in turn, required periodic amendments to individual statutes to update penalty provisions. Recognizing this challenge, Parliament enacted Act 572, which represented a significant reform in Ghana’s approach to criminal and regulatory penalties.
The Memorandum to the Bill stated that its purpose was to put in place a method by which fines provided in legislation could be dealt with in a manner that avoided stating actual fine amounts in currency units.
It further explained that, instead of expressing fines in currency, legislation should express them as penalty units, whose monetary value could be adjusted periodically without requiring amendments to every relevant enactment.
Its objective was therefore to eliminate fixed fines and establish a flexible, inflation-resistant penalty framework throughout Ghana’s legal system.
Section 1 of the Act provides that, where in any enactment a provision is made for the imposition of a fine as a penalty for the contravention of any provision in the enactment, the amount of the fine shall be expressed in terms of penalty units.
Clearly, Act 572 was designed to alter the way fines would be expressed across Ghana’s legislative framework.
First, it employed mandatory language by requiring that fines “shall” be expressed in penalty units. Second, the phrase “any enactment” suggests that Parliament intended the principle to apply universally rather than selectively, given the breadth of its language.
Third, the provision established a national legislative policy rather than a statute specific rule.
Under section 3 of Act 572, monetary fines appearing in existing enactments would be converted into penalty units using a prescribed formula.
Even where certain enactments fell within statutory exceptions, subsection (3) directed that monetary penalties should, upon the coming into force of the Act, be read and construed in terms of the equivalent number of penalty units.
This demonstrates Parliament’s intention that fixed monetary fines should not continue indefinitely.
Ironically, on the same day that Parliament adopted the penalty unit framework, it also enacted the Immigration Act, 2000 (Act 573), and both received presidential assent on the same day.
The Immigration Act, 2000 (Act 573), contains several offences punishable by fixed monetary fines. These include:
Section 2(6): Fine not exceeding five million cedis.
Section 7(3): Fine not exceeding five million cedis.
Section 8(2): Fine not exceeding ten million cedis.
Section 34(2): Fine not exceeding five million cedis.
Section 52 of Act 573 consolidates offences under the Act and reinforces the penalty framework established throughout the legislation.
Yet nowhere in the Immigration Act are these fines expressed in penalty units.
This creates a remarkable legislative puzzle. If Parliament had already accepted the policy rationale underlying Act 572, why did it enact a major piece of legislation on the same day using the very drafting approach that Act 572 was designed to eliminate?
One possible explanation is that the Immigration Bill was drafted before the finalization of Act 572 and was never amended to conform to the new penalty unit framework before passage.
While this is understandable from an administrative perspective, such an occurrence would expose weaknesses in legislative review and harmonization processes.
Another possibility is that the Attorney-General’s Department failed to undertake a final harmonization review of bills awaiting presidential assent. Major legislative reforms typically require consequential amendments to related statutes, and it would not be far-fetched to conclude that the simultaneous enactment of Acts 572 and 573 suggests that such a harmonization exercise may not have occurred.
The enactment of Acts 572 and 573 presents a fascinating challenge in statutory interpretation. Act 572 established a mandatory legislative policy requiring fines to be expressed in penalty units, as contained in the Memorandum accompanying the Act, and confirmed Parliament’s intention to move away from fixed monetary penalties and establish a more flexible and enduring penalty framework. Yet Act 573 continued to prescribe fines in currency units (cedis).
The significance of the apparent inconsistency between the two Acts serves as a cautionary example of why legislative reform must be accompanied by comprehensive statutory harmonization. When Parliament adopts a major policy shift, all related enactments should be reviewed to ensure consistency.
Whether this inconsistency resulted from legislative oversight, administrative omission, or an unexplained drafting anomaly remains uncertain. What is certain, however, is that Parliament cannot logically be presumed to have intended two conflicting legislative policies on the same day.
Nonetheless, Parliament is presumed not to contradict itself, and one of the fundamental principles of statutory interpretation is that Parliament is presumed not to legislate inconsistently.
As such, courts generally avoid interpretations that produce contradictions between statutes enacted by the same legislature, and even more compelling is the presumption that Parliament does not legislate in vain.
By Jonathan Balinia Adda, Esq. Houston, Texas
