Policy think tank, IMANI Ghana, has urged the government of President John Dramani Mahama to, as a matter of urgency, “declare a moratorium on all the current projects undertaken at the 275 administrative districts by the various state agencies in the country.
A statement signed and issued by the founding President of IMANI Ghana, Mr. Franklin Cudjoe, and copied to Today at the weekend challenged the central government to list all the projects they are currently funding and submit them to a “Value for Money” review; value for money audits shouldn’t take more than three months to be completed.”
According to him, the 2015 budget was however very quiet on the value-for-money initiative in 2014 asking that: "Has it been kicked to the curb like other projects the budget was silent on"?
Mr. Cudjoe said the audit service was allocated GH?125,527,610 in 2015 while it received GH?119,115,792 in 2014 saying that this represents a 5% increase.
According to him, a review of the activities for 2014 and projections for 2015 appear very similar with no visible extension of role(s) to warrant the 5% increase in allocation.
He wondered why the 2015 budget said nothing substantial on transparency and anti-corruption initiatives except a re-affirmation of the constitutionally mandated charge on the Auditor-General to perform his duty.
"In the budget speech, paragraph 142, in 2015 ‘the government will implement initiatives to enforce the recommendations of the Auditor General’s report.
"...this will involve sanctioning and possible prosecution of persons indicted by the report.’ Whilst this may be the first time that this has appeared in any budget statement, there is little indication that, what was suggested in the 2014 budget statement has been initiated and generated the needed impact," he asserted.
Mr. Cudjoe averred that "What has become the routine is this: we have nothing to tell the nation but since we are required to present a budget statement each year, let’s find something to tell them rather than account to them. "
He stressed the need for the ministry finance and economic planning and the government to do well to define “various levels of completion” if what they are doing is accounting to the nation.
In sum, he noted that the budget does not contain policies that are entirely different from previous budgets that would yield a transformational result. The focus on taxes is wrong as the incentive effect may outweigh the revenue effect.
He indicated that the fiscal consolidation program was likely to fail if there was no Fiscal Responsibility Law and its enforcement to regulate government spending.
