Finance Minister Seth Terkper has made some proposals to the incoming Nana Akufo-Addo administration to consider setting up a fund to finance the 2020 general elections ahead of time.<\/p>\n
According to him, such a move will reduce the financial pressure that government faces in an election year, since election expenditure is financially intensive.<\/p>\n
Speaking to journalists in Accra, Mr. Terkper who disclosed that he has already made the proposal to the transition team explained that, the out-going government had to start planning for the 2016 election expenditure at the beginning of the year to enable its smooth execution.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe expenditure was incorporated in the targets that was set for 2016 even though \u00a0they were extra ordinary if you compare the Electoral Commission (EC) budget with an election year with a non election year, you will agree with me that the election year budget will be higher,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He stated that the inability to set aside funds to executive such financially intensive programmes was the cause of\u00a0 overspending and sometimes, under-spending which may affect the quality of the elections.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe point I made was that there was no dispensation for the fact that it was an election year compared to last year which wasn\u2019t an election year so the two budgets would be different,\u201d he stressed.<\/p>\n
\u201cMay be the lesson will be for the country to make\u00a0 provision of an annual basis through the four years in meeting certain expenditures and setting aside some funds so that we do not load a single year on total expenditure \u00a0for conducting an election,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Touching on how that would improve election financing, Mr. Terkper stated that it will also help any government in power to adequately finance the district assembly elections that is held every two years.<\/p>\n
\u201cMay be that will be a better or an improvement to the way we finance our elections. And in between there is the district elections so at least we have two year cycle\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to plan around these things. This year we planned to do the releases for the election based on the calendar that was prepared right from the beginning of the year, beginning with capital expenditure like the equipment that we saw,\u201d he noted.<\/p>\n
He disclosed that government released the funds upfront and early so that the EC can procure its equipment ahead of time.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe did not put the expenditure close to the actual date of the election and then do a programme which we did with the EC for training and others closer to the elections and then in between we did releases for materials for printing and others\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe phenomenon used to be to push heavily sometimes up to 80 percent very close to the conduct of the elections . But I am suggesting that instead of taking an annual view as we did with the EC this year may be we should take a four-year view,\u201d he suggested.<\/p>\n
\u2013<\/p>\n
By: Lawrence Segbefia\/citibusinessnews.com\/Ghana<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Finance Minister Seth Terkper has made some proposals to the incoming Nana Akufo-Addo administration to consider setting up a fund to finance the 2020 general elections ahead of time. According to him, such a move will reduce the financial pressure that government faces in an election year, since election expenditure is financially intensive. Speaking to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":234440,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,171,10,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-279772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-local-economy","category-slider-1","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=279772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279772\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/234440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=279772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=279772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=279772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}