Ghana Beyond Aid: Parliament Demands Policy Document

Parliament is demanding a policy document on President Akufo-Addo’s ‘Ghana Beyond Aid’ mantra in order to make it the collective vision of the country.

The president has been rallying support for self-sustainability where the country would not have to depend on handouts from western countries to champion its economic and industrialization development agenda.

“Even if there were no aid fatigue, and with the best will in the world and the most charitable governments in place in the so-called donor countries, there will never be enough aid to develop Ghana to the level we want. Aid was never meant to be what would bring us to the status of a developed nation,” said the President in one of his rallying call.

Speaking in Parliament during a heated debate between the Minority and Majority regarding the subject, First Deputy Speaker, Joseph Osei Owusu who was presiding called for a policy document on the mantra.

“Once we are soaking on explaining what ‘Ghana Beyond Aid’ is, won’t it serve all of us if we put something together as a document to guide all of us, this is the vision [and] this is your role as an MP, this is his role as an ordinary floor member, this is your role as a teacher? So let’s stop couching it here [and] let’s concretize it for the country,” he said.

The Member of Parliament for Tamale Central Inusah Fuseini also called for the ‘Ghana Beyond Aid’ vision to be made a national one rather than that of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP)—a position the former Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration Minister Hanna Tetteh advocated for in a recent interview.

He argued that the vision cannot be realized within the tenure of President Akufo-Addo and thus need to be made a national one with a concrete policy guideline on how it would be achieved even after the demise of the current administration.

“It [Ghana Beyond Aid] must aggregate, congregate, bring people, unite people behind it…the vision itself must be translated into substance. It must move beyond rhetoric. All of us have an understanding of ‘Ghana Beyond Aid’. And so, we ought to aggregate what we think will get us to ‘Ghana Beyond Aid’ so that it becomes the collective vision of this country,” he said.

In an interview with Starr News’ Parliamentary Correspondent Ibrahim Alhassan after proceedings, Deputy Information Minister Kojo Oppong Nkrumah explained the mantra is not a mere slogan or rhetoric but a vision.

According to the Ofoase Ayirebi MP, there is a policy document backing the President’s ambition.

“There is a question of what do I do as a citizen to make the ‘Ghana Beyong Aid’ agenda a reality. How do I contribute to it? So for those who have not caught up with the understanding we take us a challenge to deepen the education and the communication that is associated with it,” he said.

He continued, “For example people said it is just talk and part of what we are demonstrating is that…it is not just talk. We are beginning to work towards it. In the year 2017, the government of Ghana under this administration targeted ourselves that if we need to raise more revenue to move ‘Ghana Beyond Aid’ then we should have a bold target revenue mobilization.”

“We set ourselves to revenue mobilization target of 33.5% on the previous years’ numbers. We are told currently by the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) that outturn suggests that we didn’t miss it by even more than 5%. Now that is huge…a huge growth in revenue year-on-year-on for a year like this. It is for this reason that we are able to fund the Free SHS for the year 2017 without resorting to aid. This year, you see us 2018 beginning the process of funding free SHS without resorting to aid or asking a donor partner.”

Source: Starrfmonline