Transparency And Accountability Critical To Dev’t -A.G

The Minister of Justice and Attorney General, Mrs. Marrieta Brew Appiah Opong says promoting transparency and accountability in governance “is a critical factor” in solving Ghana’s current economic meltdown.

Mrs. Marrieta Brew Appiah Opong

The Minister’s remarks are a clear deviation from what her colleague Minister of Information and Media Relation, Mahama Ayariga subscribes to.

Mr. Ayariga on News file, over the weekend, said that he would have preferred governance to be shrouded in secrecy rather than transparency, when he lambasted Mr. Seth Terpker, the Minister of Finance, for being too frank with Ghanaians on the state of the economy.

He said Mr. Terkper was being too open, adding that his policy of honesty is plunging government communicators into a lot of mess in defending the government on the economy, and that gets him worried.

“I have consistently had problems with the Finance Minister [Seth Terkper] on this issue. I must say it on this platform because, he has insisted on, ‘look if you want Ghanaians to help you solve problems, you would have to state it”.

However, the Minister of Justice in a recent brief at the opening of the regional forum of the West African Contract Monitoring Network (WCMN) in Accra disagreed with the above comments.

She said reforms to open up governance to the governed were delivering tangible benefits; and these according to her “are better public services; less corruption and less poverty.”

Gov’t commitment hasn’t dimmed

According to the Minister, the government was fully committed to making transparency and accountability in governance obvious, noting that the government’s priority was to be among the “most transparent countries in the world.”

She noted, “This commitment has not dimmed as government is on course to ensure transparency and accountability in the society”, submitting that one of government’s key policy initiatives was to “promote and sustain the Open Government Partnership (OGP).”

She further explained that the OGP was a new multilateral initiative that aimed at securing concrete commitments from governments to promote “transparency, empower citizens and fight corruption.”

Mrs. Oppong Appiah observed that the National Anti-Corruption Plan (2012-2021) was currently before parliament and that it constituted Ghana’s national framework to drive anti-corruption activities.

Additionally, she noted in a bid to promote transparency and total accountability in all sectors of the economy including the extractive industries, the government had acceded to the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) which became compliant in 2010.

She added that a draft bill intended to make revenue and contract disclosures in the extractive sector mandatory was also before cabinet.

Meanwhile, WACMN said that transparency and social accountability was “key to development sustainability” observing that corruption undermines socio-economic growth.

According to the World Bank – Africa Region Governance and Anti-Corruption Advisor, WACMN Project Task Team Leader, Dr. Sahr Kpundeh, establishing effective and robust coalition monitoring groups would lessen the issue of corruption in procurement and other sectors of governance, thus promoting economic growth.

He called for more collaboration between the government and CSOs to make democratic governance visible in all sectors of the economy of Africa.

The forum was attended by various coalition groups from Nigeria, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Ghana.