Ghana: the first country to be reviewed

Ghana is among the pioneer countries that acceded to the African Peer Review Mechanism. In January 2006, the country became the first member state to be peer reviewed and it undertook a self-assessment in the four APRM themes (democracy and good political governance, economic governance and management, corporate governance, socio-economic development) starting March 2004. The process of this self-assessment was led by the National APRM Governing Council (NAPRM-GC), a group of distinguished individuals given the independent authority to run it.

Alongside this self-assessment, Ghana produced a National Programme of Action (NPoA) to address shortcomings that had been discovered in the performance of governance in the various thematic areas. Once the APR Forum adopted the Country Review Report, Ghana had to submit two annual progress reports to the APRM Secretariat on the implementation of the NPoA. The main purpose of this report is to show if the measures recommended in the NPOA have actually been implemented.

Policy interventions and initiatives have been taken by the government in response to the recommendations made in each of the four thematic areas of the framework. Since the adoption of the NPoA, civil society and other stakeholders have held the government accountable for delivering on most of the recommendations identified by the APRM process. Thus, the government is actually responding to demand for policy reforms that appear to be having an impact on the governance system.

DEMOCRACY AND GOOD POLITICAL GOVERNANCE

•  A land administration project has been launched in response to the issue of ‘ Poorly defined land ownership and administration'. Moreover a process of demarcation of land boundaries in trading areas is ongoing;

•  An early warning system to stem conflicts and disasters has been developed by the Ministry of the Interior along with security agencies;

•  To reduce incidence of conflicts due to chieftaincy succession and land disputes, a Ministry of Chieftaincy and Culture have been created.

•  Parliamentarians' capacity building workshops have been held;

•  Budgetary allocations have been increased for a better functioning of governance institutions (Judicial Service, National Commission…);

•  A disability bill has been passed into law;

•  To foster civil society engagement in both governance and development process and to develop dialogue, the President has made himself available through the People's Assemblies. This was established to be held once a year in different regions of the country;

•  A Public Sector Reform Ministry has been established to improve service delivery.

ECONOMIC GOVERNANCE AND MANAGEMENT

•  The weak linkage between Economic Planning and Budget Formulation is being

addressed in the Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy II (GPRSII) and through the annual budget and the planning process;

•  To promote sound public finance management and improve the weak tax administration

system, a Revenue College and a Revenue Protection Unit ensuring the enforcement of tax laws are being set up;

•  A system of expenditure tracking has being established in response to the lack of expenditure tracking and reporting process;

•  Workshops have been held to build the capacity of parliamentarians to perform oversight functions;

•  Improvement of the debt management by reaching the HIPC completion point in 2006 and benefiting from debt relief initiatives.

CORPORATE GOVERNANCE

•  A national accounting standard has been reviewed and workshops on International Accounting Standards (IAS) were carried out by the Institute of Chartered Accountants. All businesses should be in compliance with the IAS standards beginning 1 January 2007;

•  Cabinet has approved the strategy to the Reform of the Registar-Generals's Department (RGD). Decentralization and computerization of the RGD are among the plans;

•  Cabinet has prepared an amended Bill on investment promotion that is now before the Parliament;

•  To foster access to secure and quality energy supply and to counter existing challenges, power projects have been developed;

•  A number of Taxes have been reduced (withholding tax, dividend tax, corporate tax) to enhance growth of the private sector;

•  Credit facilities for MSME have been established to meet their credit needs;

•  A National Labor Commission has been set up and a Fair Wages Commission is being established.

SOCIO-ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

•  A number of initiatives exist to ensure adequate consultations with stakeholders and perform their participation in development programmes.

•  In response to the declining trend of the quality of education, a certain number of measures have been taken. A model secondary school is being established in each district of the country, libraries are being constructed for the teacher training colleges; basic education for children up to 15 is free;

•  To address the issue of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, public education has been fostered through the media, religious bodies and traditional authorities. It resulted in a decrease of the prevalence rate for HIV;

•  The government allocated money to the Affordable Housing Programme in order to improve access to housing;

•  A Ministry of Women and Children's Affairs has been set up for a better gender mainstreaming and equality.

More information is available on http://www.nepad.org/aprm