NDPC to develop long-term framework
The National Development Planning Commission (NDPC) is to come up with a long-term development framework that will be binding on all successive governments in the country.
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The development framework, which will last over a span of 40 years, is expected to be ready by the end of 2016 after intensive engagements with stakeholders, including political, traditional and religious leaders.
The Director General of the NDPC, Dr Nii Moi Thompson, who gave the hint yesterday, said the commission would be launching the dialogue session with stakeholders on the framework within the next two weeks.
He was speaking at a media dialogue on the International Evaluation Year (EvalYear) 2015 celebrations in Accra.
Development framework details
Elaborating on the long-term development framework in an interview with the Daily Graphic, Dr Thompson said each government would come up with its medium-term development plan that would be geared towards attaining the objective of the long-term development framework.
“It will be a framework that will be binding on all successive governments. Each government will come up with its plan to work towards the objective of the framework,” he said.
Dr Thompson noted that Parliament would have to approve the framework to make it binding on all successive governments.
“We expect that Parliament will adopt it,” he expressed with confidence.
Dr Thompson said once the dialogue process was launched, the NDPC would involve all major players, including representatives from political parties, civil society organisations, faith-based organisations and public officials.
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He indicated that the commission would solicit the views of everyone “we think has some views on what Ghana’s future should be.”
Website
Dr Thompson said the NDPC would be launching a website in two weeks that would give the public access to information about development projects across the country.
He added that 2000 documents on some development projects across the country had been captured on the website.
Dr Thompson said the aim was to empower the public with authentic information to know the progress of work across the country and speak with facts and that the practice of public officials personalising public information must be stopped.
He said the introduction of the website would give the public the needed information to share their views on government projects and programmes and also assist the people to compare the various projects.
Evaluation
The Deputy Director for Monitoring and Evaluation of the NDPC, Nana Opare-Djan, said evaluation of government projects and programmes was minimal in the country, compared to monitoring.
He, therefore, called for the formulation of a policy to make it mandatory for Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to evaluate government projects and programmes.
Nana Opare-Djan called for capacity building for public officials on evaluation and suggested that MDAs should be directed to allocate between two and five per cent of their respective budgets to monitoring and evaluation.