Speeches

                                                                                      REPUBLIC OF GHANA    
                                                        Remarks at the Inauguration of the Ghana Commodity Exchange       
                                                                  Role of Ghana Commodity Exchange (GCX) in Supporting 
                                                                                        Economic Development    
   

The passage of this Act has become necessary to codify the best practices that have emerged with the implementation of major reforms in budgeting and accounting since 2010 under the GIFMIS project. In addition, continuing fiscal challenges which require some structural changes are addressed in this Act. There are also provisions setting out new policy measures regarding borrowing and debt management among others.

As you know, the Ministry has been implementing major structural reforms in Budgeting, Accounting, Payroll management, Revenue management, Debt management and Auditing over the past five years. We believe that the passage of the law will tie some of the key reforms together and provide a more coherent and overarching framework for the fiscal management of the public sector.
 

Mr. Chairman, notwithstanding an extremely challenging macroeconomic environment, most Low and Lower Middle Income countries (LLMICs) including Ghana have recorded a robust but gradually declining growth over the past decade. The Ghanaian economy has started a turnaround to continue to remain resilient, and despite recent slowdown, is currently in its thirteenth (13th) consecutive year of expansion It combines  improvements in macroeconomic management and strong capital investments in infrastructure and the energy sector during this period.

This is a crucial time for this country. For many years, Ghana stood out as a model for democracy and social stability. Your achievements in reducing poverty levels, improving the welfare of most vulnerable and providing key social services such as health and education were noticed in the region. But the past few years have been characterized by uncertainty and challenges: fiscal and external imbalances, depressed commodity prices, a growing public debt, high inflation and a weakening currency are creating a difficult outlook for the country.

On behalf of the Government and People of the Republic of Ghana, I warmly welcome you to the city of Accra and to the first and largest conference ever in Africa dedicated to the topic of enhancing data for better macroeconomic and financial policies. We are very pleased to be collaborating with the IMF and the United Kingdom Department for International Development (DFID) to discuss this important topic and I am particularly delighted to host this gathering of high-level policy colleagues from across the continent.

That we have made significant progress as a country with regards to our effort at poverty reduction through social protection programmes

That we still have a long way to go and a lot more to learn

That we need to urgently introduce efficient measures both in our social protection spending in particular and social spending in general especially with regards to resource allocation and cost of delivering these programmes