IDEG promotes civic participation in district budget process

By Ama Achiaa Amankwah

The Institute for Democratic Governance, (IDEG) a civil society organisation has developed a system dubbed, ‘Governance Issues Forum’, (GIF), to give Civil Society Organisations, (CSOs) and citizens room to take part effectively in tracking the implementation of national economic polices.

Basically, the GIF has adopted a public deliberation procedure that allows people to outline important development issues for their local communities and the nation as a whole.

GIF involves a training programme, research and information sharing, forums and follow-up activities. GIF’s are organised through a network of civil society, private and public sector actors at the district, regional and national levels.
The programme was established in June 2005 with a pilot scheme in 22 districts and five regions in Ghana prior to the preparation of the 2006 budget.

According to the Project Officer of IDEG, Miss Ruby Quantson, the outcome of GIF deliberations last year which focused on unemployment at the district and regional levels fed into the preparation of the 2006 budget in which ¢1 trillion was allocated to support youth unemployment in the country.


In furtherance of the aims of GIF a training programme was recently held at Swedru, in the Central region under the ‘Civic Participation in the District Budget Process,’ a programme designed as a follow-up to last year’s GIF.

Participants from western, central and Greater Accra regions, included ordinary citizens and government officials who agreed to form working groups to ensure that issues discussed at the dialogues are factored into future planning for districts and regions.

The training programmes are therefore aimed at equipping rural people on district budget planning process, monitoring and evaluation and developing a district data base.

A Budget Analyst of the Budget Directorate of the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, Mr. Joseph Antwi, told participants that district assemblies are constrained to contribute to the budget making process because of the limited timeframe for district planning.

Mr. Antwi explained that in practice, the district budget process is characterized by unpredictability, partly due to its rather weak linkage with the national process.

In the area of civic participation in the district budget process, he said assembly members are expected to interact with the electorate and CSOs for inputs in fee fixing and budget preparation.
“Poor interaction between assembly members and CSOs and low capacity of civil society to participate in assembly activities are some of the gaps in the district budget process”, he explained.

In Mr. Antwi’s opinion, among the major challenges facing the process is how to motivate civil society actors to commit time and resources into the district budget process to facilitate civil society participation.

He suggested that district projects must be seen as state projects since they are implemented from state resources.