The President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, has urged heads of Specified Entities (SEs) to provide inputs on a comprehensive digital economic policy which is being developed by the Communications ministry expected to enable the country leverage digital technology for economic and social development.
The NPP led administration since it assumed office in 2017 has been big on digitisation in all spheres of the economy from the rolling out of the Ghana card, paperless port, medical drone technology, digital property addressing system, and the provision of banking services to every resident of Ghana through the innovative Mobile Payments Interoperability platform, all aimed at formalising and transforming Ghana’s economy and further bring about inclusion.
Speaking at the 2022 Policy and Governance Forum under the theme ‘Improving the performance of Specified Entities : Leadership and Technology’ in Accra, the president disclosed “The Ministry of Communications and Digitalisation is in the process of developing a comprehensive digital economic policy and strategy that will guide our efforts to leverage digital technology for economic and social development as well as offer guidelines for the financing, institutional strengthening and human capacity building required to achieve the objectives of the policy.
I encourage you as heads of specified entities to send in your comments, suggestions and inputs to this process as principal stakeholders, my expectation and indeed that of every Ghanaian is to see that SIGA works in tandem with respective specified entities and their boards to assist in moving our country to a situation beyond aid.”
Further, the president encouraged the board members and management, to act as watchdogs in ensuring that the institutions under their jurisdiction live up to their mandate; “My charge to you is to leave your entity in a better position than you came to meet it”
The Director General of the State Interests and Governance Authority (SIGA), Edward Boateng expressed concern over some SEs inability to submit management and audited accounts for the 2020 fiscal year.
“It would interest us to know that a large proportion of SEs are yet to submit their management and audited accounts for the 2020 fiscal year, and some have not submitted accounts as far back as the 2017 fiscal year. Colleagues, we cannot manage that which we cannot measure. The books have to balance if we are to achieve our goal of building an economic superhighway, else our vision of a Ghana Beyond Aid will continue to be a pipe dream. Specified Entities should be the catalyst to help grow our economy.
My interactions with the Specified Entities and a review of available documents in these past few weeks since I assumed duty at SIGA, have revealed the challenge of a lack of policy coherence among State institutions. Conflicting policies and actions across government agencies, departments and Specified Entities have blurred the common goal and resulted in needless turf wars, duplication of efforts, delays and high cost of doing business, among others. Streamlining existing policies or introducing new clear ones that help address these and other legacy issues will be an important first step to sharpen our operational efficiency and effectiveness and help secure investment.”
Minister of Public Enterprises, Joseph Cudjoe, also disclosed that processes are undertake for the development of the necessary policy documents that will govern the public enterprises sector are far advanced. These policy documents include, State Ownership policy, Equity Studies Report, Code of Good Corporate Governance, Assets verification and Valuation of defunct/inactive entities, Performance Management Framework.
“In spite of the challenges occasioned by the COVID 19 pandemic and its attendant problems notwithstanding, we are still expected to meet the needs and expectations of the public by delivering quality services relative to our mandates.”
