Ghana Statistics Development Plan makes progress with $40m benefit
The Ghana Statistics Development Plan is making progress after $40 million worth of financing as it prosecutes its programmes in the country.
Dr Philomena Nyarko, the Government Statistician says the financing is being used to implement the country’s major statistics programmes.
Dr. Nyarko was speaking at the opening of a four-day workshop for statistics trainers in Accra, Ghana Monday August 24, 2015.
According to the organisers, the training is aimed at building the capacity of National Statistical Offices in Africa to design, implement and evaluate their national statistics development strategies.
The workshop is also expected to help Ghana develop a successor plan to the Ghana Statistics Development Plan of 2008-2013, executed under the Marrakech Action Plan with technical and financial support of the African Development Bank (AfDB).
Deputy Minister of Finance, Mrs Mona Quartey and Dr Philomena Nyarko, the Government Statistician, noted that the workshop comes at a crucial time as Ghana stands on the brink of adopting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for which reliable statistics on a wide range of key indicators would be necessary for assessment.
Dr Philomena Nyarko recalled that key state Ministries, Departments and Agencies under the Ghana Statistics Development Plan had benefitted from $40 million to implement their statistical programmes: $10 million from the Statistics for Results Facility – Catalytic Fund (SRF-CF) and $30 million from the International Development Association (IDA).
She said the implementing agencies of the Ghana Statistics Development Plan had begun reaping “substantial benefits” from the strategy.
“The Ghana Statistical Service, for instance, has embarked on institutional reform and organizational change to make it more effective to coordinate the National Statistical System. It has presented a new statistics bill to parliament, revamped its ICT infrastructure and equipment and produced and disseminated a number of statistical products in recent past”, she said.
She also noted that though there were enormous benefits to be derived from the design and full scale implementation of National Strategies for the Development of Statistics, capacity gaps exist within National Statistical Offices with regard to design.
The Deputy Minister of Finance said her outfit and the government of Ghana will continue to support statistical development as strong and efficient national statistical systems promote good decision making and monitoring of development progress.
“Ghana will continue to collaborate with her Development Partners to ensure the efficient production, management, dissemination and use of relevant and reliable statistics at national, regional and continental levels”, Mrs Quartey said.
Mrs Quartey and Dr Nyarko urged participants to take the training seriously in order to be able to lead in the development of credible and implementable statistics plans.
By Emmanuel Odonkor