'Ghana Beyond Corruption’ proposal important – Osafo-Maafo admits

Senior Minister, Yaw Osafo-Maafo has described as welcoming the idea for the Akufo-Addo’s government to pursue a “Ghana Beyond Corruption” agenda, as proposed by the Netherlands Ambassador to Ghana.

The Netherlands Ambassador to Ghana, Ron Strikker, had said during the launch of the 20th-anniversary launch of Ghana Initiative Integrity (GII) Thursday that corruption is a bad phenomenon which dissuades foreign investors from coming into a country.

He said he would rather the government had a “Ghana Beyond Corruption” as a policy rather than a “Ghana Beyond aid”, which was launched by the President Akufo-Addo on May 1.

“…your official policy is Ghana beyond aid; why not Ghana beyond corruption,” he asked, when he took his turn to share his thought on corruption.

He explained that “corruption is a very bad thing and companies suffer and will stay away if they think that they are going to be harassed by corruption in a certain country…”

Confronted with the comments of the ambassador, Mr. Osafo-Maafo who is also the chairman of the Ghana Beyond Aid committee, said corruption matters in the Ghana Beyond Aid agenda

He said even though he was not sure the ambassador meant Ghana should rather focus on Ghana beyond corruption, “whatever is it, all that is important”.

He explained that corruption is a key element of the Ghana beyond aid agenda has been stated variously in the policy document.

Mr. Osafo-Maafo added that corruption must be viewed in a larger context to include people who work for a few hours and still earn their full salaries.

Meanwhile, he has touted what he described as the successes of the “Ghana Beyond Aid” agenda, thus far, stating aid to Ghana from 2011 to 2017 has gone down 50% from 5.6% of GDP to 2.9% to GDP.