The President of the Republic, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, has launched a high-level evaluation team for the National Anti-Corruption Action Plan, (NACAP) 2015-2024, today, Thursday, 21 December 2023 at the Jubilee House, in Accra.
This very necessary evaluation, according to him, is to understand how the Action Plan has contributed to reducing corruption in Ghana, and to make necessary adjustments to our policies and institutional arrangements based on the evaluation results.
He is also confident that, the evaluation will “assess the contribution of NACAP to the fight against corruption in all spheres, and to form the basis of developing our next NACAP, i.e. NACAP 2 (2025-2034).”
Speaking at the launch of the team, the President said, “mindful of the enormity of the task in evaluating anti-corruption interventions, strategies and action plans, an evaluation team of diverse expertise, including those in political science, economics, communication and gender, has been constituted to evaluate the maiden NACAP.”
He also touched on the diverse composition of the team of national evaluators led by the Ghana Statistical Service, and supported by international evaluators from the UNODC to benchmark the evaluation exercise with international best practices and guarantee credibility.
It is expected that the team “will conduct a high-quality evaluation of NACAP will be conducted utilising a wide range of information sources with several appropriate methods and tools,” he added.
Citing colossal increases in budgetary allocations for independent state institutions as part of government’s efforts to support their work, he said, it is also an undeniable fact that budgetary allocations for institutions actively engaged in public sector accountability, i.e., the Office of the Auditor-General, the Judiciary, Parliament, the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), the Ghana Police Service, the Economic and Organised Crimes Office (EOCO), and the Financial Intelligence Centre, have witnessed unprecedented increases since I assumed office in 2017.
“At the end of 2022, the budgetary allocation to Parliament witnessed a one hundred percent (100%) increase, compared to what I inherited in 2016; the Police saw its budget increase by two hundred and seventy-four percent (274%) at the end of 2022, in comparison to 2016; the Audit Service recorded a two hundred and fifty-eight percent (258%) rise in its budgetary allocation at the end of 2022, as compared to 2016.”
Continuing, he said, “the budget of the Judiciary rose by thirty-six percent (36%) at the end of 2022, compared to 2016; the budget of the Office of the Attorney-General increased by one hundred and sixty-two percent (162%) at the end of 2022, compared to 2016; the budget of EOCO increased by forty-seven percent (47%) at the end of 2022, in comparison to 2016; the budget of the Financial Intelligence Centre increased by four hundred and forty-three percent (443%), compared to 2016; whilst the budget of CHRAJ increased by ninety-nine percent (99%) at the end of 2022, compared to 2016.”
President Akufo-Addo was confident that, “these figures reflect his resolve to ensure that institutions of state of relevance in the anti-corruption agendum are properly equipped to discharge satisfactorily the mandate of their offices.”
Concluding, the President noted that, “fighting corruption is a shared responsibility. This is why we must all see the evaluation of the maiden NACAP and the development of NACAP 2 as the responsibility of all stakeholders in this nation, citizens and non-citizens alike. I urge all stakeholders to give the exercise the priority it deserves, provide open and honest responses and inputs, and offer their support and co-operation to ensure a successful evaluation. Let us embrace it as a beneficial learning tool, rather than a threatening scrutiny.”