Prioritize Education With Oil Cash …ACEP Tells Finance Minister

The Africa Centre for Energy Policy [ACEP] has called on the Finance Minister to allocate more funds to the education sector towards the achievement of quality outcomes.

The Deputy Executive Director of ACEP, Benjamin Boakye said despite the fact that Ghana has achieved the UNESCO target of 6percent budgetary allocation to the education sector, there were factors which indicates that more need to be done in the education sector.

He stated that in 2014, the education sector received 37.5percent of the total oil cash [ABFA] on capital expenditure which represents an amount of GHc276, 068,885 which is significant for infrastructure development.

That notwithstanding, Ben Boakye however added that government should prioritize education by ensuring that more money from the oil revenue is spent on education above the 5percent budgetary allocation.

According to him, the only way to build the economy is by making that conscious effort of developing the human capital base of the country.

According to him, countries like Brazil have prioritized education where even recently a new law which allocates 70 per cent of royalties to finance education, Botswana has consistently spent over 5percent of GNP and now reaching 8.2percent in 2010.

Ben Boakye indicated that Ghana has a competitive advantage over education and agriculture because we have arable lands and therefore 55percent of our citizenry are already engaged in agricultural activities.

In a powerpoint presentation, he explained that education is associated with high social and economic returns.

“Oil is a non-renewable and revenues from it should be invested in a future that relies less on oil and more on skilled, educated workers,” he posited.

He said this an a regional consultative forum under the theme, “Repositioning Education Financing on Goods and Services and Assets’ Through Increased 2016 ABFA Funding and Disbursement for Education Sector.”

Mr. Boagye added that stakeholders, CSOs and participants from the Northern Network for Education Development at the end of the forum will consolidate all the views and compile a communiqué and present them to the Finance Minister to inform the budget on how revenue should be spent in relative to education.