Over 50% loans, grants from dev partners unspent

More than 50 per cent of loans and grants extended by development partners to Ghana for projects and programmes currently remain unspent due to ineffectiveness and inefficiency in the public sector, the Senior Minister, Mr Yaw Osafo-Maafo, has stated.

He said while those loans and grants remained unutilised, many institutions in the country were looking for money to carry out various development projects and programmes.

“There are monies which have come from various development partners in the form of grants and loans but for one reason or another, we have not been able to use these monies efficiently and effectively,” he added.

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President unhappy

At a stakeholders’ validation workshop on the draft National Public Sector Reform (NPSR) strategy (2018-2023), Mr Osafo-Maafo noted: “A committee has been put together at Cabinet to see how we can push this because the President did not understand it.

“At our last Cabinet meeting on December 19, 2017, we are going to look at what is holding these monies, some of which include counterpart funding from the government,” he stated.

The workshop, held on the theme: “Delivering for citizens and private sector,” brought together representatives from academia, private sector, ministries, departments and agencies, metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies, as well as the World Bank, the African Development Bank (AfDB) and civil society organisations.

The NPSR strategy is hinged on six pillars---citizens and private sector-focused public sector, a capable and disciplined workforce, strengthened public sector regulatory framework, modernised and improved working conditions, strengthened local governance structures and digitised public sector services and systems.

Effective, efficient public sector

Mr Osafo-Maafo indicated that the need for an effective NPSR had for a long time been advocated by state and non-state actors, as well as development partners, making it imperative to develop a comprehensive national strategy in response to the needs of private sector and Ghanaians.

He said the government also believed that the private sector machinery was needed to push the whole economy forward, a reason the services provided by the public sector must satisfy the private sector and the citizenry.

“If you go against the private sector, then we have a problem since that engine we want to use for growth is being undermined,” he stated.

The minister expressed worry about the breaching of various payment and clearance processes at the various revenue collection points in the country, a challenge, which he said, was depriving Ghana of revenue to run the economy.

He pointed out that the NPSR strategy was one of the structural programmes of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to extend credit facility to Ghana from 2015 to 2016.

“We, therefore, cannot conclude the IMF programme without raising a certain kind of reform, and we cannot allow inefficient public sector to be a hindrance,” he explained.

Continuous borrowing

According to the senior minister, the government employed a lot of public servants whose compensation, in the form of salaries and wages, accounted for a large share of government expenditure.

“When the Minister of Finance presented the 2018 budget, he said compensation for salaries and wages, servicing of debt and statutory payment constituted 107 per cent of the country’s total revenue.

“These three items have taken the total government revenue and we need to borrow to cover the seven per cent, and this makes the government borrow continuously for all other things we have to do,” he noted.

Mr Osafo-Maafo, therefore, called for drastic changes in the public sector, saying: “If we have 75 per cent revenue covering these three items, then we have 25 per cent extra resources to do other development projects.”