Ghana gov’t launches 2012 public expenditure report

Government together with its development partners have launched the 2012 Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA) Performance Review report in Accra on Wednesday.

The report presents the indicator-led assessment of the functioning of the Public Financial Management (PFM) systems in Ghana and measures the progress achieved since the previous assessment.

Mr Patrick Nomo, Director of Budget, Ministry of Finance, speaking at the dissemination workshop, said the PEFA assessment provides countries with the opportunity to compare their PFM systems performance with other countries.

He said it would also assess the performance of the country’s PFM systems against very well established international indicators, adding that “it will also serve as a benchmark for monitoring performance in subsequent periods”.

He said the country has joined the middle income countries with a robust economic growth and also has prospects for joining major oil-producing economies.

He said the increased wage bill and consequential crowding-out effect on the availability of resources for non-wage recurrent and development expenditure posed new challenges to public sector financial management.

The Budget Director said a programme based budget system is being introduced for implementation in 2014 to ensure that uses of resources were linked to expected results.

Mr Harald Kuppers, Programmer Manager, Good Financial Governance Programme, said the report looks back to the budget operations of the years of 2009 to 2011 and analyses the management of the public funds.

He said although the reforms in PFM have made further progress since the assessment was done in 2012, the report provides insights into the strength and weakness of the PFM systems in Ghana.

Source: GNA