IMANI boss advocates for Assessor-Generals in fight against corruption
Founding President of Think Tank, IMANI Ghana, Franklin Cudjoe, says there is a need for Assessor-Generals to vet high-valued multimillion-dollar procurement contracts by the government which are often the medium for grand theft corruption in the country.
The need for the Assessor Generals, Mr Cudjoe quipped, is to ensure that the high-valued multimillion procurements contracts return value for money for the country before they are executed by the Public Procurement Authority (PPA).
“One of the things I think we can do to prevent corruption even before it happens is that we need to have what I call serious Assessor Generals at the heart of government. Now, these are persons who would be responsible for vetting high-valued, packed multimillion-dollar procurement contracts, just to be sure that they return value even before they hand it over to the PPA. I mean, it’s one of the things we can do to reduce a lot of these procurement corruption in the fight against grand theft corruption,” Mr Cudjoe stated.
He made the assertion during the NorvanReports and Economic Governance Platform’s X Space Discussion on the topic, “Corruption In Ghana: Impact on Everyday Lives and the Economy”.
Speaking further during the X Space discussion, Mr Cudjoe noted that, the fight against corruption with the use of the Assessor Generals should begin from the Office of the Presidency, asserting “that’s where every big corruption actually starts and ends.”
According to him, there is a lot of waste and corruption at the Presidency as the Government for instance can save millions of cedis by simply doing away with several parastatals that are not needed at the Presidency.
“The type of corruption we are dealing with starts at the heart of the presidency, we should take a fine comb and go through every entity that is sleeping there and you will be surprised to find out that a lot of them we really don’t need them.
“We can save millions of cedis if we did that. This year, for instance, there has been 100% more money given to the Office of the President than they got last year. And this is in a period when we are supposed to be in austerity, so like I said we really need to go to the centre of Office of Government machinery, that’s where every big corruption actually starts and ends,” he remarked.
Ghana is estimated to lose between $12bn to $13bn annually through corruption according to IMANI Ghana.
Ghana has scored zero for the fourth consecutive year in fighting corruption, according to the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) 2023 by Transparency International (TI).
The Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII), the local chapter of Transparency International in its report said, “Ghana scored 43 out of a clean score of 100 and ranked 70th out of 180 countries and territories included in the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) 2023 released on 30th January 2024 by Transparency International (TI). This marks the fourth consecutive year of stagnation in Ghana’s anti-corruption efforts, as indicated by the CPI.”
Transparency International attributed Ghana’s stagnation to the deteriorating justice system, which it says is reducing the accountability of public officials and therefore allowing corruption to thrive.
won’t solve anything if it sits with government. same thing the procurement laws were set up to do but individuals manning these gates are influenced day in day out to side step procedures. This will be one more person to influence. If the independence of these so called assesors can be guaranteed, then probably some headway could be made. Not a penny can be saved if the government has little interest. Any government serious about the corruption fight will only need to seal the many loopholes explored by public officials to loot the nation. For instance, is there an asset declaration law? how many government officials and appointees declared their assets, who monitors what was declared against newly acquired ones and questions the difference? Just seal the loopholes and enforce the laws.