From Richard Owusu-Akyaw, Kumasi.
A public interest advocate has charged President Akufo-Addo to pay attention to institutional corruption in Ghana towards rebuilding the economy.
“Government should pay attention to institutional corruption, because it may free more resources and may reduce our borrowing”, Dr. Ernest K.P. Kwarko has suggested.
In an interview with The Chronicle, Dr. Kwarko explained that institutional corruption are low hanging fruits and you can free some resources that may reduce borrowing and, therefore, charged government to be interested in what the ministries, departments and agencies (MMDAs) do with the disbursed funds.
According to him, one way that we can address the reduction in expenditure is by tackling institutional corruption, since money disbursed to these MMDAs and project contractors are under-applied, without anybody checking them.
He explained: “I think we have to do ourselves a favour. One of the areas we have to pay attention to is institutional corruption. Quite apart from the normal audit, other forensic audit must be carried out”.
He also asked the government to educate Ghanaians on its agricultural revolution programme –“Planting for Food and Jobs”.
According to him, Ghanaians have to take planting for food and jobs seriously, emphasising that it would reduce the import wage by GHC150 million and that could save foreign exchange, stabilise our currency, drive down inflation and in turn help with the micro economic stability.
He added: “Even gold, if we semi-refine it before export, we will add value to it. Once we have enough food to eat, it will reduce our import burden, disclosing that: “We are spending about US$530 to US$560 million per annum on rice importation”.
Dr. Kwarko, therefore, called for more civil society organisations to hold government accountable, once they are elected.
He asserted that: “Every party may like to win an election or stay in power. Every opposition would like to run down the ruling government. This is where civil society must rise and demand accountability.
“Public interest advocacy is not easy, sometimes you even have to speak against the party you have a soft heart for, but truth is truth.”
Delving deeper into the Ghanaian economy, the public interest advocate said the government has fashioned out its Appropriation Act, which only sets a ceiling for expenditure and allows the Finance Minister, on behalf of the President, to spend above our means by a certain percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
He was of the view that if we are talking about the current budget, for which this mid-year review has been done, the original target which was set for a deficit of 6.5% will rise to 6% of GDP, which is about 2.5 % drop.
He explained that government wants to reduce its expenditure because it undershot its revenue target.
Dr. Kwarko, however, commended the government for a great job in waging war on illegal miners.
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Root out institutional corruption -Public interest advocate
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