‘Budget won’t have public inputs’

Daily Graphic, Pg. 17, Tues. Feb. 17, 2009

Story; Rebecca Quaicoe-Duho

THIS year’s budget which is expected to be read on Wednesday, February 25, 2009 will not have any public inputs as has been the norm for the past three years.
The Head of the Budget Unit of the Ministry of Finance, Mrs Eva Mends said the budget would only focus on the programme of the present government as stated in its manifesto.
Mrs Mends said this during a capacity building workshop for 30 Members of Parliament (MPs) including 20 females and 10 males on Gender Budgeting organised by the Women in Law and Development (WiLDAF) Ghana, under its “We Know Politics” project.
She explained that the time frame within which to put the new government’s policies into action did not allow for the public to make any inputs into it.
She however, said that the budget would not have any huge difference in policy direction when compared to that of the previous administration’s, only that, it would have a shift in its implementation and strategies.
She cited examples where the NDC manifesto would rather shift from district and mutual health insurance schemes to a national scheme saying that the broad programmes of the past and present administrations were the same but only the strategies for implementation were changing.
She however said that since the government was voted into power on the basis of its manifesto, it is important the budget dwells on the manifesto.
Mrs Mends who took the MPs through the budget process said as MPs they had the task of scrutinising and reviewing all sector submissions to ensure that they did not over budget and also that the budget was consistent with the government’s priorities.
She said as MPs, they also had oversight for the implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the budget through their committees.
She also called on committees members especially on critical sectors such as education and agriculture to scrutinise the budget to ensure that estimates were realistic.
A Budget Analyst, Mr Vitus Azeem who also took the MPs through budget analysis and gender budgeting in an interview said it had become necessary for the issue of gender budgeting to be discussed since women form a greater majority of the country’s population.
He said putting the issue at the doorstep of MPs would ensure that state resources were allocated properly and fairly to benefit equal men as women, saying that it would help give equal opportunities for both girls and boys in terms of education and health care delivery.
The National Programmes Co-ordinator of WiLDAF Ghana, Ms Bernice Sam, said the workshop formed part of the organisations post elections interventions to ensure that the issues of women were not left out in the day-to-day policies of the country.
She said the workshop would help enhance the MPs capacity on the Floor of the House when the time comes for them to debate on this year’s budget saying that it is also aimed at updating the MPs on the need for Ghana to continue with gender budgeting.
Presently, three ministries that is the ministries of Food and Agriculture, Health and Local Government, Rural Development and Environment are being piloted for gender budgeting.