Ghana needs to improve financial reporting, monitoring and evaluation – GIMPA Rector
Ghana is on course with her economic management system but needs to improve her financial reporting, monitoring, implementation and evaluation practices.
Professor Yaw Agyeman Badu, Rector of Ghana Insititute of Management and Public Administration, who made the recommendation, said Ghana’s economy would experience accelerated development if all economic indicators were improved.
He was speaking at the Validation Workshop on Research Findings on Financial Governance in Ghana, which was jointly organised by African Capacity Building Foundation and Centre for Democratic Development (CDD) in Accra on Thursday.
The workshop was to validate the country report of African Governance Outlook (AGO) Project, a report that provided effective African-based diagnostic tool for financial governance that had regional reach and involved national research and think-tanks.
Alluding to recent proceedings at the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament, Prof. Badu expressed dissatisfaction that most data referred to were those that were four years old and said that financial reporting system in the country was not the best.
Mr Francis Tsegah, a Senior Research Fellow at CDD, said participation of the media and civil society in governance was key in promoting the rule of law and accountability.
He asked media and civil society organisations to check government against abuse of incumbency and said that it was wrong for political activities to be funded with State funds.
Mr Tsegah expressed confidence that participants would make meaningful inputs to review AGO, collate t inputs and validate the report to improve public financial management systems in Ghana.
The Country 2012 AGO report on Ghana indicated that she scored lowest in the area of inclusiveness though the country’s democratic credentials had been highly touted in Africa.
Dr Anthony Tsekpo, Project Consultant for the AGO Report, attributed the low score to the “largely top-down nature of Ghana’s economic management infrastructure.”
He said despite efforts to introduce fiscal decentralisation, a high degree of central planning had always been one of the features of the Ghanaian economy.
Dr Tsekpo, who is also a Senior Budget Expert at the Parliamentary Centre, stressed that: “Though there is evidence of improvements in this area, the ability of domestic actors to influence economic, fiscal and expenditure policies remains inadequate.”
The AGO report used existing information from credible secondary sources such as the African Peer Review Mechanism, Afro-barometer, Global Integrity survey, Mo Ibrahim Indexes, Open Budget Initiative and the Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability reports.
Source: GNA