World Bank, Ghana Gov’t Sign US$10m Credit

The World Bank and the Government of Ghana have signed a US$10m credit as a supplemental funding for the country’s ongoing Economic Management Capacity Building Project (EMCB), a statement from the Bank’s Washington office has said. The amount is to be used to support the Government to perform its role as a facilitator for economic development, through implementing a reform initiative for improved public sector management and service delivery. As part of the package, a proposal has been made to introduce some changes in the project to reflect the extended Public Sector Reform (PSR) activities. The Task Team Leader for the project, Juan Costain, said, “the proposed additional financing is to provide for expanded activities for PSR”. Some of the activities to be supported will include the development of a pay administration framework, job and pay-scale evaluation (including a national survey), installation of a time and attendance system, a performance management system, and an advocacy program to support adoption of the initiative. It will also finance Government Development Communication Enhancement Program which seeks to overhaul the Ministry of Information and National Orientation’s public communication functions and those of key ministries, departments and agencies, including the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning and the National Development Planning Commission; and develop and support the implementation of a development communications strategy in support of the PSR. Further activities include design and consensus building for systemic reforms of public sector pay, human resource management, civil service training programmes, service delivery improvement in public sector agencies, modernization of records management, improvement to conditions of work, implementation of reforms in selected subvented agencies and the deployment of an ICT backbone within the Civil Service to facilitate the execution of Government programs. The credit is provided on standard International Development Association (IDA) terms, with a commitment charge of 0.10 percent per annum and a service charge of 0.75 percent per annum (on the disbursed credit balance) over a 40 year period of maturity which includes a 10-year grace period.