...Four-year budget trend analysis reveals
A study of Ghana’s budgets over the period 2010-2013 has
revealed a trend of irregular financial resource allocation to subsectors that
drive essential services delivery.
The authors, the Institute for Fiscal Policy (IFP), report
that over the four-year period government’s budgetary allocations to basic
education, primary healthcare, rural water and sanitation, and social
protection as a share of the respective total sector budgets have at best been
chequered.
Generally, the analyses show that year-on-year budgetary
allocations to the subsectors have fluctuated, mostly taking nosedives. In the
case of basic education, for instance, “Between 2010 and 2013 the variance is
22.3 percentage point drop, the highest sub-sector share being 67.1% in 2010
and the lowest share being 44.8% in 2013.” The level is the lowest for the
basic education sector in four years despite nearly 500,000 children still not
enrolled in school.
On the water and sanitation front, the share of rural water
budgeted expenditure reduced from 35.2% in 2010 to an average of six percent
for the period 2011 to 2013, reaching the lowest of 4.3% of overall sector
budgeted expenditure in 2013.
The FIP, an affiliate of social policy-focused civil society
organisation Integrated Social Development Centre (ISODEC), conducted the study
over a two-month period from September to October 2013. It analysed sub-sector
budgeted expenditure allocations as a share of overall sector budgeted
expenditure of four sectors – education, health, gender, children and social
protection, and water and sanitation – to establish the adequacy of the annual
funding support to the sub-sectors in relation to the sector policies and
challenges.
Mrs Philomina Johnson, Coordinator of the IFP, opined that
these subsectors are the bedrock of basic service delivery and must receive
appropriate attention. “These are the sectors that make your people eat and
work,” she stated on Friday in Accra.
The Institute had called a meeting of pressmen and women as
well as civil society activists to present to them “Expectations of the 2014
Budget with respect to the Rights and Protection of Women and Children” and
used the study outcomes as rationale to make demands on the government as the
nation readies itself for Tuesday’s presentation of the government’s budget
statement and fiscal policy for the next financial year.
Presenting the outcomes of the study in Accra, Mrs Johnson
said the right to social services is a fundamental human right and
constitutionally guaranteed under Article 12(1) of the 1992 Constitution of
Ghana as follows: “The fundamental human rights and freedom shall be respected
and upheld by the Executive, Legislature and Judiciary and all other organs of
Government and its agencies…”
Therefore, “we should work towards ensuring that right of
people to access social services is upheld,” she said.
Co-Presenter of the outcomes, Nicholas Adamptey, who is a budget
analyst, said “we looked at the 2010, 2011, 2013 and 2013 budgets…The concern
for the subsectors is that the variance is too wide compared to overall sector
budgetary allocation fluctuations.”
Meanwhile, the authors have not
yet established which areas the resources taken from the subsectors under
discussion were applied because that was outside their scope of study. But,
they will consider the question in a future study.
In
making recommendations, the Institute said, among others, that the 2014 budget “should
review upwards the basic education budgeted expenditure to be scaled up to at
least 61%” to ensure that basic education achieves its targets as enshrined in
the Education Sector Strategic Plan (2010-2020). In terms of primary
healthcare, the Institute called for sub-sector allocations to reach 40.8% of
the overall health sector budgeted expenditure.
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