Almost all Ghana foreign missions are facing financial crisis which may lead to dire consequences for the country’s image abroad, Foreign Affairs Minister, Mr Hackman Owusu-Agyeman, has revealed.
The magnitude of the situation is amply reflected by the fact that some of the missions have had their utility services occasionally disconnected due to their inability to pay bills. Mr Owusu-Agyeman disclosed these when presenting his Ministry’s budget estimates for the 2003 fiscal year in parliament last Thursday.
Indeed some of the missions are already in such distress conditions that they have difficulty paying even local staff salaries. The implications of this for Ghana’s image abroad are obvious,” he told a bewildered House. Mr Owusu-Agyeman therefore appealed to the House to support the Ministry’s cause whenever he asked for supplementary funding. “I must stress that unless such future consideration is forthcoming, it will be extremely difficult for the Missions to satisfactorily execute the tasks entrusted to them for the year,” he added.
The Ministry requested for over ?538 billion but Finance Ministry granted ?322 billion due to the usual limited national resources. Ghana has 43 missions abroad.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs promotes and protects Ghana’s security and economic prosperity through mutually beneficial political and economic interactions with other members of the international community; and contributes to the promotion of regional and international peace and security. The effective discharge of the Ministry’s mandate, the Minister said has for several years been impaired by a combination of factors, including poor information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure, limited human resource and a weak administrative policy framework.
This, he said, has resulted in difficulties for effective co-ordination between the Ministry, its 43 missions abroad and the 77 resident foreign diplomatic and other missions in Ghana. “There is therefore the need to strengthen the Ministry’s ICT base by the acquisition of adequate computers, printers, scanners and accessories in 2003,” he said. These problems notwithstanding, Hon Owusu-Agyeman said the Ministry and it 43 missions facilitated and co-ordinated the promotion of Ghana’s economic, trade and investment relations with the rest of the world by liaising with all local operators and mounting promotional activities abroad.
These efforts yielded positive results as shown by the volume of commercial exchanges. He revealed that the sources of these investments included the United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Germany, India, China, the United States, Switzerland, Canada, France and Lebanon.
