GOVERNANCE ROUND TABLE TOWARDS FORMULATION OF A NATIONAL GOVERNANCE FRAMEWORK DOCUMENT

Hon. Dr. Kwabena Duffuor, Minister of Finance and Economic Planning has disclosed that the NDC government has resolved to embark on new reforms of the Public Financial Management (PFM) systems as a demonstration of its commitment to good economic governance in pursuit of its better Ghana agenda.

He said the overarching objective of these reforms is to improve the effectiveness of service delivery and the allocation of scarce resources, using the new tools and process resulting from an integrated financial system that would guarantee a more efficient service delivery.

“I believe that the principles of good governance, openness, participatory processes, transparent decision making processes, accountability, and rule of law should be applied even more in the public financial management systems” he said.

Dr Duffuor was speaking during the opening of a two day governance roundtable conference which has brought together about 60 participants from government, development partners, parliament, governance institutions and civil society.

The conference under the theme “towards a national governance framework: experiences, challenges and way forward” is aimed among other things at developing a governance framework document to guide government policy action and priority setting on governance issues.

This new system Dr. Duffuor said would be interfaced with the e-government project to underscore government resolve to expose the utilization of financial resources to more scrutiny as part of the governance process.

“It is our expectation that these reforms will build capacity to improve accuracy, comprehensiveness reliability and timeliness of financial and fiscal reporting at all levels of government and improve public financial management, accountability, and transparency commensurate with best practices and under treasury single account principles” he explained.

He underscored the importance of good governance saying it is a well established fact that transparent, participatory and accountable governance is a prerequisite for a rapid economic growth and equitable development.

The Minister of Justice and Attorney General, Mrs. Betty Mould Iddrisu in her opening remarks called for the strengthening of governance institutions in the country saying though Ghana has achieved a lot in terms of good governance there was a need for a review of existing policy frameworks and actions to ensure that we develop appropriate policy responses to emerging issues.

“Institutions such as CHRAJ, the Judiciary, the Electoral Commission, NCCE etc need to have a complete overhaul and in this context I would urge all these institutions to input into the Constitutional Review Commission’s work in order to maximize the opportunity of modernizing their constitutional infrastructure and legal arrangements”.

The Majority Leader in Parliament, Mr. Cletus Avoka and Justice Jones Dotse, who represented the Chief Justice all called for more support for their respective institutions to enable them discharge their constitutional obligations.

H. E. Claude Maerten commended Ghana for her democratic achievements pledged the development partners’ support to the country’s democratic reforms.

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