Source: ODI
The Briefing paper argues that the Ghana's Multidonor budget Support has done enough to justify itself but is flawed.It has not achieved a sufficient critical mass and it has strayed too far from its initial objective of reducing transactions costs. These flaws have prevented it from minimising the risks of injecting budget support into a still weak fiscal system. While it is seen as having kept reform on the agenda and as having a generally pro-poor influence, it has neither been able to minimise the risks by galvanising more effective PFM systems nor to maximise the payoff in terms of poverty-reduction.
Remedial action is therefore recommended, along the following lines:
• The MDBS programme needs to be re-conceived primarily as a method of budget financing, not as a tool for policy leverage.
• Annual disbursements should not be conditional but instead be dependent upon the maintenance of ‘due processes’ in public spending (see Box 2).
• Reforms should be promoted by open dialogue with both domestic and external stakeholders.
• The PAF needs to be re-designed as a mechanism for enhancing internal, rather than external, accountability, by making reform targets and results public, and by giving wider access to policy debates.
• The original objective of minimising transaction costs needs to be brought back to centre-stage.
Parallel steps by the Ghanaian Government are also needed. It should:
• Develop a statement of aid policy setting out Government preferences for different forms of assistance and the future development of MDBS
vis à vis other modalities.
• Take actions to strengthen the public finances and raise the credibility of the budget, to reduce dangers of misuse of budgetary aid.
• Strengthen its capacity to put assistance to good use. This would require difficult decisions about the desirable size and remuneration of the public service
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Source: Afrobarometer
In this paper the author offers an argument he calls the 'inequality trap' - how high inequality leads to low trust in out-groups and then to high levels of corruption - and back to higher levels of corruption. The analyses is presented for Africa using afrobarometer data - the full cross-national surveys for Round 2 (2002), the Round 2 data for Mali (which have questions on trust and on limiting the incomes of the rich), and the Round 3 data for Nigeria (which have the most comprehensive data to test the claim that people see corruption as stemming from inequality - and leading to greater income disparities between the rich and the poor, between the powerful and the powerless). The fairness of the legal system is the central factor shaping people’s views of how equally people are treated.
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Source: UNDP Ghana
In this issue
♦ Ghanaian CSOs meet UN Expert on Violence against women.
♦ The Case for investing in civil society.
♦ African Civil Societies hold Solidarity Concert for Darfur in Accra.
♦ CSO Profile: Abibimman Foundation.
♦ In sub-regional forum on small arms Civil society issues strong communiqué .
♦ Sustainable Rural Livelihoods Project in Northern Ghana.
♦ Chances of achieving MDGs slim without CSOs.
Click on the attachment below to read the newsletter
Source: AFRODAD
In this communique, organisations from all five regions of the African Union and the Diaspora welcomed the opportunity of the Grand Debate to decide on the next steps for the acceleration of political and economic unification of the African continent. They called for the heads of state to consider 1) a democratic and participatory Union, 2) African citizenship, 3) strengthening regional institutions, and 4)strengthening national institutions
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Source: ODI
The paper's main findings are:
• In Tanzania, General Budget Support is provided by 14 donors and together with HIPC relief contributes 20% of public expenditure. Despite this, however, GBS is not yet a dominant aid modality.
• The immediate effects of the GBS programme have been strongly positive, but its role has been to facilitate a nationally-driven reform process; domestic revenues have grown even faster than aid.
• GBS has been associated with a large growth in government discretionary spending and a major expansion in health and education services. However:
i. There are few signs of improved efficiency of public spending or of long-term obstacles to service quality being addressed.
ii. The ‘challenge function’ in the budget process remains weak, mainly for political but also for more technical reasons.
iii. The expected improvements in intra-government incentives and democratic accountability are not yet apparent.
• The scope for change in these respects has been limited by the fact that 80% of development spending is still funded by donor projects.
• Outcomes have improved remarkably in respect of macroeconomic stability, investment and growth, while the negative macroeconomic effects of increased aid flows appear manageable.
• Outcome improvements are otherwise rather mixed, with large questions about service quality, and significant legal changes that are too recent to have yielded results.
• Poverty impacts are uncertain for the last half decade, the most relevant period, because there has been no household survey since 2001.
• The unevenness of growth and service-delivery improvements give reasons for caution about future poverty trends.
• In summary, GBS in Tanzania has not had all the positive effects expected of it, some of which are necessarily long-term. But the gains that have been made are important and would not have been so effectively facilitated by any other aid modality.
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Source: World Bank
This Dialogue argues that in a democracy, the media are widely regarded as surrogates for the citizens, providing information necessary in order that citizens can make valid and reliable decisions. They are also one of few institutions outside government that have structural rights and therefore collectively, are an important institution of horizontal accountability. In many ways the media already help in ensuring accountability by bringing to light wrong doings on the part of public officials and from time to time pointing out lapses in the system. The media has been instrumental in expanding the public voice by giving space and airtime to citizens who have grievances or comments, or contributions to make. Both print and electronic media have acted as a public forum for the discussion of all manner of important national issues. This link between the public voice and the media must be strengthened and refined. The strengthening of the links of accountability rests not only on the media alone, but also on every member of society.
The challenge for the media, however, is to make it possible for people to demand accountability and compel accountability. And this challenge can only be met if the media do a good job of monitoring the GPRS; informing citizens about the it and setting the right tone for a much better and more robust discussion on the progress and implementation of the program.
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Source: World Bank
This report argues that the role of the Ghanaian Parliament in policy development in this era of globalization is limited thanks to the 1992 Constitution. Relations with multilateral institutions and indeed the formulation of international trade agreements that are later signed by the State remain largely the preserve of the Executive branch of government. International agencies prefer not to deal directly with Parliament but they have an almost unimpeded access to the Executive and the President. Though the Constitution grants so much power to the President of Ghana and his Executive for effective and decisive governance, the same privilege seems to make the Legislature play second fiddle. This state of affairs is less than satisfactory if we desire effective checks and balances to sustain our democracy. While it is true that the national interest can be better protected if the legislators and civil society as a whole take a second look at the disabling Articles in the constitution, it is also important to let the multilateral agencies and the international community know about the harm they are causing the governments and the peoples of the developing nations for not effectively involving their legislatures in the formulation of visions and programmes for those countries.
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Source: Centre for Policy Analysis (CEPA)
This paper reviews the following:
• the mechanisms of aid delivery, their potential effects on economic governance,
• and the emerging mechanism—the multi-donor budget support (MDBS)—for direct budget support in Ghana.
It also provides:
i. a brief background to aid flows in Ghana and the regime of aid coordination;
ii. The trends in aid delivery mechanisms to Ghana
iii. and the potential impact on government systems;
iv. the direct budget support arrangement and the key elements that may be used as a lever of reform and to accelerate desirable change in government systems.
Lastly the paper reviews the results of a field survey of donors and government stakeholders and an assessment of the experience to date and the lessons learned.
The argument of the paper is that the MDBS is likely to prove superior to other aid delivery mechanism such as:
• project aid,
• food aid,
• Sector Wide Approaches (SWAps)
• and District Wide Aproaches (DWAps)
Rather, multi-donor direct budget support (MDBS) may dominate for a number of reasons. It has the potential of reducing transaction cost, makes for better internal coordination of resource use, builds recipient’s capacity to design and implement desired strategies, and provides an avenue for high level policy dialogue that can focus attention on and, in discrete steps, accelerate desired improvements in government systems.
Source: DFID
This report argues that there appears to be a virtuous and mutually reinforcing relationship between improving capacity for macroeconomic and public financial management, the GPRS (Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy), HIPC (Highly Indebted Poor Countries), the IMF PRGF (Poverty Reduction Growth Facility) and the MDBS (Multi Donor Budget Support) programme. It is difficult, and possibly unnecessary, to identify attribution to each of these developments. During the past three years these processes have combined to deliver higher rates of growth, lower domestic borrowing, lower interest rates, and increased spending on poverty related expenditures.
MDBS has supported capacity development by providing additional budget resources to fund such investments, and by using dialogue and monitoring to concentrate attention on crosscutting reforms to tackle bottlenecks. This approach has been more successful in some areas than others, with PFM (Public Financial Management) providing a notable success. While the relationship between MDBS capacity development and complementary TA (Technical Assistance) support is complex, emerging experience indicates that small-scale and co-ordinated TA can provide technical direction when senior officials drive the reforms and MDBS provides the incentives, resources and focus.
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Source: ODI
The Briefing paper argues that the Ghana's Multidonor budget Support has done enough to justify itself but is flawed.It has not achieved a sufficient critical mass and it has strayed too far from its initial objective of reducing transactions costs. These flaws have prevented it from minimising the risks of injecting budget support into a still weak fiscal system. While it is seen as having kept reform on the agenda and as having a generally pro-poor influence, it has neither been able to minimise the risks by galvanising more effective PFM systems nor to maximise the payoff in terms of poverty-reduction.
Remedial action is therefore recommended, along the following lines:
• The MDBS programme needs to be re-conceived primarily as a method of budget financing, not as a tool for policy leverage.
• Annual disbursements should not be conditional but instead be dependent upon the maintenance of ‘due processes’ in public spending (see Box 2).
• Reforms should be promoted by open dialogue with both domestic and external stakeholders.
• The PAF needs to be re-designed as a mechanism for enhancing internal, rather than external, accountability, by making reform targets and results public, and by giving wider access to policy debates.
• The original objective of minimising transaction costs needs to be brought back to centre-stage.
Parallel steps by the Ghanaian Government are also needed. It should:
• Develop a statement of aid policy setting out Government preferences for different forms of assistance and the future development of MDBS
vis à vis other modalities.
• Take actions to strengthen the public finances and raise the credibility of the budget, to reduce dangers of misuse of budgetary aid.
• Strengthen its capacity to put assistance to good use. This would require difficult decisions about the desirable size and remuneration of the public service.
