Government asked to change language and format of budget

A new study dubbed "Building the Demand Side of Good Governance: Enhancing Conditions for Social Accountability in Ghana" has recommended that government should review the language and format of the national budget to make it simple for citizens to understand and participate in its formulation. The study said for instance instead of saying "macro economic indicators," the budget should say "intended progress in human development outcomes." The study also said government should support civil society efforts such as those undertaken by Centre for Budget Advocacy (CBA) of the Integrated Social Development Centre (ISODEC) to undertake independent budget analysis and to promote public understanding of budget content and key issues.

The study was undertaken by the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD) and the World Bank. According to the study, citizen's access to financial and budget information is particularly difficult and limited. This seriously hinders participatory budgeting, independent budget analysis and expenditure tracking. The study therefore recommended that government should make information and processes related to the national budget and expenditures more open and accessible. The government was also asked to make in-year reports, audit reports, Public Accounts Committee reports and reports on extra- budgetary activities available to the public.
The study further recommends that government should expedite the implementation of the 2003 Public Procurement Act including programmes for institution and capacity building as recommended in World Bank/IMF report of 2004. It urged government to introduce the requirement for public officials to declare their assets, form a task force of government and civil society representatives to explore ways for improving access to data on public transfers and expenditures in sectors of priority and public interest.

According to the CDD-WB study, it will be important for government to introduce formal mechanisms for citizens and Civil Society organizations to make input into budget policies and debate. "At the local level, government should continue to build upon piloting of composite budgeting and participatory budgeting process," the study said.

In a reaction to the research report, the head of the Budget Development Unit of the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning Ms. Eva Mends said the doors of the ministry are always open to all those looking for information on the national budget. She said very few individuals and organizations have shown interest in contributing to the budget. She said each stage of the budget process is transparent and citizens as well as civil society groups can participate and send their contributions or seek information on it. Aside from that, she said the budget is sent to Parliament with detailed estimates, but neither the Civil Society organizations nor the media follow-up to pick up the issues for public discussion and debate. She admitted that although, the budget processes are technical, so much can be done to break down the technical aspects of it. Until public interest in the budget processes are whipped up, Ms. Mends said it would be difficult to build the demand side of good governance and social accountability. "While acknowledging that a lot needs to be done, we should also try and build the capacity of the public to participate in the budget processes," she said.

A policy Analyst with the CBA, Nicholas Adamtey said over the past five or six years, the Centre has been working on the national budget, analyzing it and involving citizens in budget debate. He said there are other offices in the Ministry where it is difficult to access information and this discourages the public from taking part in the budget processes. Mr. Adamtey said access to information in the districts is very difficult and called on the Ministry of Finance to simplify ways of getting access to financial information in the districts.

Speaking at the Stakeholder Review Workshop on the study, the Executive Director of CDD Ghana Prof. Emmanuel Gyimah-Boadi said it is clear that there has been considerable progress in fostering public accountability in Ghana since the return to democratic rule under the constitution of the Fourth Republic. However he said few will deny that serious deficits remain in national efforts to institutionalize public accountability. "The deficits are severe especially in the demand side of accountability which is a necessary complement to the supply side as enshrined in the 1992 Constitution." According to him, the 1992 constitution supplies a good framework for public accountability but there is insufficient citizen demand on state institutions and officials accountability. "This is where social accountability comes in, it is a fancy term describing citizen actions to secure accountability on the part of the state and its agencies and officials," Prof. Gyimah-Boadi said.

The research report was developed and produced by the Participation and Civic Engagement Group of the World Bank with guidance and contribution by Beatrix Allah-Mensah and Kofi Marrah both of World Bank Ghana office and Carmen Monico. The country research for the study was undertaken by the CDD under the leadership of Prof. Gyimah Boadi.

Social accountability is key to meeting citizens needs

It is usually common to hear citizens' charge at government, accusing it of doing little to improve their livelihoods and for that matter not putting enough money in their pockets. Government functionaries, in an effort to repulse the charges, would usually quote figures of budgetary allocations to show how much resources have been expended on schools, roads, hospitals and other social amenities the rural areas and how that ought to have improved the lives of the people. In the cycle of exchanges, there usually emerges no victor. The end result, however, is that these exchanges lead to mistrust between the citizens and their governments. The mistrust is built on the fact that citizens do not usually receive the volume of resources, which government says it has transferred to them as a result of leakages from central government and intended recipients. But even where they do, these resources are not always expended on projects that communities prefer.

There is also the question of what, in definitive terms, constitutes a development project by those who provide, and what those projects mean to the recipients. The Centre of Budget Advocacy (CBA) of the Integrated Social Development Centre (ISODEC) views this disconnection as a direct consequence of the lack of social accountability, a mechanism, which allows and empowers citizens to participate in monitoring and demanding accountability from government, while at the same time supporting government to improve its capacity to engage with citizens for the benefit of promoting reforms in poverty-targeted policies, budgets and programmes.

The CBA said this when it launched the report of a study, "Social accountability and Poverty Reduction in Ghana," which it carried out in five Districts in Ghana with support from the British Department for International Development (DFID) through the Institute for policy Alternatives (IPA) and the Swedish International Department Cooperation Agency (SIDA) through Diakonia, a Burkina Faso non-governmental organization. The study was to enable communities make an assessment of poverty reduction interventions and service provision at the community level, and provide them the opportunity to interact with their service providers. It was also to verify whether resources allocated to vulnerable and excluded groups for poverty reduction expenditures actually reach them and how they are used. The study also had the added objective of helping communities to evaluate the implementation of the Ghana Poverty Reduction strategy (GPRS) and empower them to demand accountability from local government authorities as well as make suggestions as to how the identified loopholes could be plugged.

Presenting the findings in Accra on Thursday, the Programme Coordinator of CBA, Mr. Vitus Azeem noted that in their examination of past budgets, there was evidence that the Social Services Sectors, i.e. education, health, water and sanitation etc, continue to command a greater proportion of public expenditure than others, but this has not yielded the desired results in some communities. This, he blamed on the fact that communities are not normally involved in the execution of projects. Mr. Azeem disclosed that from their findings, communities did not know the volume of resource allocations for specific projects, since service providers do not disclose amounts allocated for projects and programmes to the communities. "Similarly, communities had no idea about the type of materials required for the execution of projects. In some cases, contractors were not introduced to communities and so they had no means of monitoring projects awarded on contract by District Assemblies."

The communities, he said, felt that if community elders and opinion leaders were given recognition and consulted before projects are started, there would a sense of ownership and the communities would be ready to participate and offer communal labour and any assistance needed. They also would be able to demand quality work from the contractors. Similar findings were made on the part of service providers. According to Mr. Azeem, service providers accepted that community participation in project design and implementation are essential ingredients for meeting community needs.

Knowing that social accountability is an integral component and indeed critical to the success of Ghana's poverty reduction efforts, the CBA recommends that before projects are implemented, service providers should solicit inputs from community members. They must also be transparent to ensure the effective utilization of resources and accept monitoring efforts from community members.

Mr. Kojo Yankah who was the guest of honour for the occasion launching the report stated that "all those who are genuinely interested in seeing poverty reduced in Ghana, should see the CBA's report and its findings as a call to action. In an apparent acceptance that the CBA report had dug out important ingredients which ought to engage the minds of all democrats, he said, "If democracy is based on the sovereign will of the majority of the people, and if all governments claim to be working on behalf of the people, then we have every right, after reading the report before, to ask further questions."

The Executive Director of ISODEC, Mr. Bishop Akolgo, in his concluding remarks, called on all to demand social accountability since every one has the power to do.

Read Statement
Full report is available at ISODEC at $10.00

Launch Of Country Report On Budget Transparency
Ghana Scores Zero Percent In Four Out Of Six Indicators!

As the Finance and Economic Planning Minister, Mr. Kwadwo Baah-Wiredu prepares to presents the 2007 budget statement to parliament on November 9, he will be confronted with the bare facts that Ghana scored zero percent in four out of six indicators on providing information on the budget to Ghanaians. Of six indicators, Ghana scored 0% for providing no information at all on pre-budget statement, in-year reports on execution, end-of-year review and the Auditor General's report. Ghana however scored 64% score alongside Malawi, and the Czech Republic for providing "significant information" on the budget proposal.

This was contained in a study on budget transparency based on past budgets up to 2005. This is the first ever index to rate 59 countries on how open their budget books are open to their citizens. The Open Budget Index, produced by 59 civil society organisations in 59 countries rates countries on the scale of zero to 100 percent depending on whether their respective governments have provided "extensive information, significant information, some information, minimal information or scant or no information" to their citizens on their proposed national budgets. The countries were also rated on whether they make available to the public pre-budget statements, in-year reports on budgets' execution, mid-year reviews, year-end reports or the auditor's report.

The index, which is an initiative of the International Budget Project, Washington D.C. in collaboration with CSOs around the globe, aims to provide citizens, legislators and civil society advocates with comprehensive and practical information required to gauge a government's commitment to budget transparency and accountability. The index assesses the availability of key budget documents, the quantity of information they provide and the timeliness of their dissemination to the citizens in order to provide reliable information on each country's commitment to open budgeting.

Launching the report in Accra on Wednesday at a press conference, Mr. Vitus Azeem, Programmes Coordinator of the Centre for Budget Advocacy (CBA), the budget unit of ISODEC, said that the study showed that Ghana's proposal provided substantial information to the public. He said the government has for instance, produced copies of the 2006 budget statement and these are publicly available for purchase. Additionally, it has posted the budget statement on its official website (www.ghana.gov.gh), which can be downloaded by any one. By making these efforts to get the budget to all stakeholders, the country scored 64% on the scale of "providing significant information." UK scored the highest (95%) on this index, followed by New Zealand (89%) France (86) and South Africa (83%)

Read full Statement....

The International Budget Project

CBA EXPRESSES CONCERN OVER 2006 SUPPLEMENTARY BUDGET

In July this year, the Finance Minister presented a Supplementary Budget to Parliament for approval. The CBA has studied the Budget and has made some comments drawing government's attention to some pertinent issues. Read Press Statement.

Open Letter To the President
(Report on the nation-wide public fora on the 2006 National Budget)

A report on the nationwide public forums on the 2006 budget undertaken by the Centre for Budget Advocacy (CBA) of ISODEC has gathered that the public is getting increasingly worried about the luxurious lifestyles of some public officials. The numerous Special Assistants, Advisors and Spokespersons for ministers (notwithstanding their deputies), and the District Commissioners (DCEs) who all use free official vehicles, free fuel and accommodation is a drain on HIPC Ghana.

Participants also called for judicious use of borrowed resources. According to the report many participants commended the government for the early presentation of the 2006 budget and underscored the importance of the participation of the poor in poverty reduction projects. They praised government for the opportunity to make input into the budget but called for an institutionalisation of the budget outreach beyond the existing institutions to foster increased interest in the budget process. Others were concerned with inconsistencies and inaccuracies in the budget.

On the macroeconomic front, some participants lauded the macroeconomic stability which will enhance employment, reduce capital flight and the risk of doing business but cautioned that the growth rate of 6% targeted for 2006 might not propel poverty reduction and achieve the Millennium Development Goals. While some lauded the reduction in corporate taxes and the revision of income tax, others agued that the minimum wage of most workers exceeded the threshold of ¢2.4million per annum and therefore will not benefit most workers and called for realistic wages.

These public responses and more have been compiled in a "Letter to the President". Read more.

A full report on the regional debates will be posted here.

Post budget statement by CBA

2006 budget highlights