The Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition (GACC), in collaboration with Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP) and ABAK Foundation Ghana, has held an advocacy engagement with the media and others on how to verify published extractive data.
The forum held in Kumasi recently on the theme: “From Disclosure to Impact: Mobilising Civil Society to Verify Published Extractives Data and Advocate for Equitable, Accountable Spend of Funds”, sought to educate the citizenry on the Petroleum Revenue Management (Amendment) ACT, 2015 (ACT 893); to address implementation challenges and refine revenue allocation formulae, as well as the Annual Budget Funding Amount (ABFA).
ABFA is the portion of Ghana’s petroleum revenue transferred into the national budget to support development, capped at a maximum of 70 percent of the Benchmark Revenue per the PRMA Act 815, Section 23(3). It is a critical funding source for infrastructure, education, and agriculture, often adjusted based on oil prices and production volumes.
The objective is to train citizens to be knowledgeable on happenings in the extractives sector, mobilise and support citizens to verify content of extractives sector report, as well as to have informed citizens demand responses to extractive sector corruption and non-compliance by government.
Ms. Dorcas Affum Tenkorang, Assistant Programmes Officer, GACC disclosed that the project (monitoring of ABFA projects) which commenced in 2024 will end in March of this year.
She said five districts – Asante Akem Central, Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolitan Assembly, Ho, Nzema East and Tamale were selected noting that her outfit is at advocacy engagement phase with stakeholders.
The programmed Officer explained that GACC has been to the field to monitor and have identified certain issues that stakeholders needed to be aware of, as well as making recommendation to effect changes.
She noted that the merging of ABFA into “The Big Push”, hence the need for the engagements to ensure such mistakes are not repeated.
Ms. Tenkorang urged the citizenry to scrutinise ongoing projects in their communities to ensure that the desired change had been effected.
From Oswald P. Freiku, Kumasi
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