Africa-Press – Ghana. Mr Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, Ranking Member of Parliament’s Committee on Economy and Development, has made an urgent call on government to submit to Parliament all programme documents for thorough auditing and effective oversight.
He noted that government had launched some 11 programmes so far including Big Push, 24-Hour Economy, and Feed Ghana but had failed to make the policy documents available to Parliament despite persistent requests, handicapping parliamentary oversight.
“What is important is that when they are made available, you, faculty here, lecturers, professors, can now interrogate and get a sense of whether or not these programmes can deliver the growth that is being promised, the jobs that are being promised, and the transformation that is being promised. Or whether you can even give feedback,” he said.
“But in the absence of the actual programme, all of us struggle. We don’t have it, you don’t have it. It is only the government that will tell us that this year they will create 800,000 jobs from programmes that we haven’t seen,” he added.
Mr Nkrumah, the Member of Parliament (MP) for Ofoase Ayirebi, made the call during a roundtable on the 2026 budget statement organised by the Department of Data Science and Economic Policy, School of Economics, College of Humanities and Legal Studies, University of Cape Coast (UCC).
It was held on the theme: “From macro-stability to inclusive prosperity: Data-driven strategies for implementing Ghana’s 2026 budget.”
The event assembled politicians, academia, and industry to interrogate the 2026 budget statement, its promises and shortfalls and how they aligned with medium and long-term development goals of the country.
The roundtable featured Mr Nkrumah, Dr Sharif Khalid, Economic Advisor to the Vice President; Mr Courage Boti, Manager of Macroeconomic Research, GCB Bank, as well as Dr William Brafu-Insaidoo and Dr Raymond E. Kofinti, both from the Department of Data Science and Economic Policy, UCC.
Mr Oppong Nkrumah called for parliamentary performance hearings on various government programmes and interventions to ascertain their outcomes and ensure value for money.
“So when we give you GHC200 million for Planting for Food and Jobs that you are going to do an agric intervention programme, there will be food stock and prices will come down and at the end of the day, you spend that GHC200 million and food prices haven’t come down, I think that we should be having some performance hearings.
“Not just about Public Accounts Committee to see whether you spent the money in accordance with accounting and legal practices, but about outcomes for which reasons we make those funds available.
“In particular, reports on the quality of life indicators need to be focused on, so that we can measure the kind of impact that we are making,” he said.
Mr Oppong Nkrumah expressed the need to automate and regularly publish institutional data, particularly fiscal data, to foster transparency and accountability and inform individual and organisational decisions.
“How do we have the data to ascertain the impact on inequality, poverty reduction, jobs, all of those other issues that we raise when it comes to determining the impact of these programmes.
“So Parliament needs to assert itself a bit more to demand deep data so that we can do a lot of good assessments and analysis. Else, we are only left to what has been announced, and then we jubilate. Down the line we will find out that some of the things have not happened,” he stated.
He entreated parliamentarians to tone down on excessive partisanship and approach issues more technically and nationalistically to foster credibility.
From the side of government, Dr Sharif Khalid, Economic Advisor to the Vice President, maintained that although there had been some windfalls, the current economic stability and high performance indicators were due to the ingenuity of government.
He said they inherited an “overheated economy” but they had managed to return it to normalcy through innovative interventions such as Goldbod which had spurred transformational change and macroeconomic stability.
He indicated that the “Big Push,” government’s flagship programme for road and infrastructure, provided the foundation for many other policies, while the 24-hour economy remained a potent engine to expedite real growth across all sectors with a significant participation of the private sector.
Dr Khalid was confident that the Big Push alone would create thousands of jobs across the country to mitigate youth unemployment.
Touching on the financial sector, he backed suggestions to formalise the Ghanaian economy on the back of real-time data, but stressed the need to first build trust in the financial system following the banking sector crisis which had left some banks still reeling.
He appealed to citizens to actively support and participate in government’s flagship programmes to realise their full potential.
Dr William Brafu-Insaidoo audited the budget and found that it largely aligned with Ghana’s development goals, Agenda 2057 and the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals.
However, he observed that while there was so much emphasis on achieving fiscal growth and stability, investments in major flagship programmes such as the 24-Hour Economy were inadequate.
He expressed frustrations over the country’s inability to generate adequate revenue to pursue development.
He was particularly averse to the situation of excessive taxation which had left the economy largely informal, entreating government to explore more sustainable ways to mobilise revenue.
For instance, he said the State needed to amend its laws to harness its natural resources effectively for development.
Mr Courage Boti, speaking as an industry player, acknowledged the role of private capital in national development, but insisted that they needed stability to invest in policies and projects.
In the interest of protecting depositor’s funds, he explained that banks were risk-averse and were only ready to invest in areas where their monies were guaranteed, pointing to the low investments in areas like agriculture and SMEs.
Thus, he appealed to government to create the enabling environment that gave owners of private capital comfort to invest in various sectors.
Dr Raymond Kofinti, who dealt with inequalities in the Ghanaian society, observed that inequality had been on the rise in the country from 1992 to 2017.
To address the situation, he said government must strengthen job creation in the industry sector and modernise agriculture in line with the medium term national development policy framework.
He also called for the gradual adjustment of social protection expenditure to about 1.5 per cent of GDP.
Notwithstanding, he commended government for moving social protection allocation from 0.6 to 0.9 per cent of GDP in the 2026 budget as well as the “heavy investment” in education.
In a statement delivered on his behalf, Professor Daniel Agyapong, the Provost of the College of Humanities and Legal Studies, explained that the roundtable had been instituted to interrogate the feasibility of the fiscal path and the impact of government’s programmes.
He observed that despite the macroeconomics successes achieved, Ghana still grappled with poverty, high youth unemployment, and persistent regional inequalities.
He maintained that government’s flagship policies could only succeed if they were backed by clear strategies to create jobs, reduce inequalities, and improve the livelihoods of the people.
Prof Agyapong urged stronger collaborations among government, academia, civil society and the private sector and insisted that the country’s budget must at all times address national priorities.
For More News And Analysis About Ghana Follow Africa-Press
