Govt spends more on salaries — IMANI (Saturday, March 7, 2015) page 38
Ghana is
spending more on salaries and emoluments for public sector workers than
investment in infrastructure, according to a 2009-2012 budget tracking analysis
done by IMANI Ghana, a policy think tank.
According to
IMANI’s analysis, while emoluments of the public sector had been going up
during the period, the same could not be said of investments in assets, which
had largely been sporadic.
The analysis
of public sector spending that cuts across many sectors also identified budget
overruns as a key feature of government spending.
In the
Ministry of Health, salaries and emoluments took GH¢1.6 billion out of the
sector’s budget against GH¢30.4 million in investments while in the education
sector, it was GH¢1.4 billion and GH¢503,606,228 for emoluments and investments
respectively, according to the IMANI data.
It was only
in the oil and gas sector that personnel emolument — GH¢4.2 million was not
more than investment — GH¢7.4 billion.
Health
Speaking at
a stakeholder validation of budget tracking and analysis for the social and
economic sectors of Ghana from 2009-2012, a Research Officer of IMANI, Mr
Emmanuel Buadi Mensah, said although GH¢5.6 billion out of GH¢5.68 billion had
been released under the period under review, most of the targets of the Health
Sector Medium-Term Development Plan (HSMTDP) were not achieved.
Targets
Mr Mensah
observed that in spite of the huge investment, mortality inequality gap between
richest and poorest children appeared to be widening.
“The
report also revealed that the indicator for nurse distribution did not improve
and the numbers of midwives are reducing across all the regions with the
exception of Ashanti Region, which showed a marginal increase.
“The
doctor-to-population ratio did not change much and with 11 times less doctors
per population in the Upper West Region compared to the Greater Accra Region,”
the officer further stated.
Touching on
different interventions within the education sector, he said although
accessibility had improved during the period, quality remained a challenge.
Another
research officer of IMANI, Mr Patrick Stephenson, stated that investments in
the water sector notwithstanding, there still existed significant regional
differences in access to improved sanitation that was more prevalent in urban
than rural areas.
On the oil
and gas sector, he said rural Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) promotion
programmes aimed at increasing access to LPG by 50 per cent in 2015 was far
from being achieved.
The
President of IMANI, Mr Franklin Cudjoe, observed that the essence of the budget
tracking was to ensure social accountability and to make sure that Ghanaians
had value for what went into the public purse.
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