Dissemination Of 2019 Citizens Budget Takes New Turn

PFM Network Ghana with support from GIZ has launched a 4-month project titled “Enhancing Citizens Knowledge on National Budget for Improved Financial Governance” in Accra to be implemented in 6 districts.

The launching started with a Training of Trainers workshop to capacitate partner CSOs to effectively disseminate the citizen’s budget to the citizenry in the selected districts

Speaking at the launch, Ms. Harriet Donkoh in her statement said when the government initiates the Budget, it is meant for the citizens and therefor they must know what is contains. She added that GIZ is happy to support the empowerment of citizens through the dissemination project and congratulated the Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) for the enthusiasm shown to this course.

She noted the training is not just a platform to acquire knowledge but also an opportunity to share ideas on best ways the citizen’s budget could be disseminated beyond this project. She acknowledged the collaboration from Ministry of Finance on the good Financial Governance program of GIZ and expressed hope for strong collaboration in the future.

Executive Secretary of PFM Network, Charles Othniel Abbey in a presentation highlighted on the Social Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability project and its successes, affirming that this project would help inform the citizens more so that they can demand accountability from duty bearers. He said Ghana’s performance (scoring between 49-52 out of 100) in the Global Budget Index from 2016 is an indication of limited opportunity for citizens’ participation in the process since the high performing score is marked 60 and above.

He discussed some of the Social Accountability tools to be used included fora, town hall meetings, community radio and social media. He added that the project seek to promote citizens knowledge of the National budget, foster greater understanding of government revenue and expenditure and also improve Ghana’s Open Budget Score.

Madam Felicia Tettey and Mr Fredrick Yiryel from the Budget Unit of Ministry of Finance in a presentation also reiterated that the Citizens Budget is a condensed version of the main budget thus CSOs cannot limit the dissemination to that alone but rather go the extra mile to access the main budget document and programme based budget of the various MDA and MMDAs to be well equipped to respond to issues during field implementation.

Representatives from the Social Accountability Unit of the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development participated in the launch and were hopeful this project would empower citizens with information to ask duty bearers critical questions on development issues in the country.

The project would be implemented in 3 regions of Ghana. Ga South, Adentan and Shai Osudoku in Greater Accra Region, Nsawam-Adoagyiri and Yilo Krobo in the Eastern Region and Kpando in the Volta Region.