Two-day meeting on Aid Transparency opens

Accra, Sept. 8, GNA – A two-day meeting on how to enhance

information on Aid flows between donors and recipient countries, to ensure

predictability and easy monitoring of the use of resources opened in Accra

on Tuesday.
The workshop, which is being held under the auspices of the International

Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI), is an attempt by stakeholders to make

information about aid flows more available and accessible, particularly

partner countries.
Representatives of partner countries from West and Central Africa, and

Civil Society Organisations are participating in the meeting.

They are; Ghana, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African

Republic, Chad, Cote d' lvoire, Gabon, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia,

Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa,

Tanzania and Togo.
IATI seeks to respond to the concerns raised by partner countries and

civil society organisations that information about aid flows is not sufficiently

timely, detailed or accessible.
The 2008 Paris Declaration evaluation found that partner countries faced

"continuous serious difficulties in securing and providing timely, transparent

and comprehensive information on aid flows that enable them to fully report

on budgets to their legislature and citizens".
Through IATI, donors will also implement the commitments made in the

Accra Agenda for Action (AAA) to “publicly disclose regular, detailed and

timely information on volume, allocation and, when available, results of

development expenditure to enable more accurate budgeting, accounting and

audit by developing countries".
Opening the workshop, Professor Newman Kusi, Chief Director of the

Ministry of Finance said there was uncertainty about aid flows because of

the global economic crisis and called for a high level of predictability and

transparency from the donor partners.
He urged partners to build a collective voice on the issue of predictability,

transparency and accountability to be able to stimulate the changes required

in reforming the global aid architecture.
“We all know that with concerted and transparent efforts, such as in aid

reform, we could achieve more results,” he stressed, adding that the

consultations and the aid transparency initiative should provide the platform

for peer learning on aid information management and shared discussion of

challenges.
Prof. Kusi expressed the hope that the IATI initiative would produce

agreements on common information standards to help partner countries,

improve planning and budgeting and promote mutual accountability.

GNA