THE GHANA Integrity initiative (GII) - a local chapter of Transparency International in collaboration with other civil society groups, have urged government to speed up efforts to strengthen the asset declaration law to help curb the ever-increasing rate of corruption especially among public officials.

This issue had been the obsession of the Ghana Integrity Initiative, which had for the past few days, engaged eminent stakeholders in a discourse session in Accra to chart the course for the strengthening of the asset disclosure law in Ghana.

Mrs. Linda Ofori-Kwafo, Acting Executive Secretary of Ghana Integrity Initiative, reiterated that it was in the vision of GII to help build capacity to emancipate Ghana from the menace of corruption, which had been an impediment to the development of the country.

She stated that a recent survey conducted by the institution to assess the effectiveness of the assets disclosure regime as an anti-corruption tool, indicated that most Ghanaians including public officials required under the law to make declarations of their assets, showed abject ignorance of the laws as well as its importance to the fight against corruption.

She also revealed that anecdotal and other research data also confirmed the increasing persistence of corruption in the country in spite of the progress chalked in advancing the country's democratic governance.

Mr. Dennis Weller, Ag Mission Director of United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Ghana, in his remark stated that corruption was the greatest obstacle for the progression of a democratic economy in Africa and also a major contributor to the poverty situation, which is most prevalent in the African sub-region.

He stated that corruption when well tackled could be a vehicle to speed up and improve the competitiveness of any growing economy. 'Countries that can overcome corruption, and improve its rule of law will increase national income four fold'.

Mr. Weller revealed that extensive research indicated that foreign investment had reduced in countries perceived to be corrupt, hence the need to build capacity to adopt an effective strategy that could be developed to combat corruption and control ethical conduct in public service, which would in turn, be an important priority for governments to achieve economic progress.

An overview of the challenges the current law on asset declaration faced gave out a chronological history of the development of asset declaration regimes, which had long existed in two realms under which administrative compliance had not been that effective especially with regards to public disclosure verification and sanctions.

The law however was identified as the most effective key compliance mechanism for curbing the incidence of conflict of interest and the fight against corruption.

It was recommended that it was important that government expedite action on the passage of a credible freedom of information bill to facilitate public access to information about the activities of government, including budgetary allocation, revenues and expenditures, and thereby enhance accountability and transparency, which would travel lengths at increasing the citizens' trust in government and also adopt and implement with dispatch the conflict of interest guidelines for public officials.