Ghana on Thursday launched a Natural Resources and Environmental Governance Technical Assistance Programme (NREGTA) that seeks to direct implementing Ministries and Agencies on how to implement programmes on natural resource and environmental governance.

In 2008, Ghana launched a Natural Resources and Environmental Governance (NREG) programme to address governance issues related to mining and forestry sector and to improve environmental management and the NREGTA programme is to enable the NREG to roll out its programmes efficiently and effectively.

The programme has the overall objective of ensuring economic growth, poverty alleviation, increasing revenues and improving environmental protection.

The launch of NREGTA in Accra was also used to create awareness about the project, update the implementing agencies and other stakeholders on the project implementation procedures, namely procurement, financial management, safeguards, performance indicators, among others.

The implementing agencies are Forestry Commission (FC), Minerals Commission (MC) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), as well as the Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation and the Finance and Economic Planning Ministry.

Major Samuel Mahama Tara (RTD), Chief Director, Ministry of Finance, who launched the NREGTA, said the programme would enable the implementers to merge individual and sectoral activities and to refresh stakeholders on the project objectivities, key parameters, and how the projects fits into the larger vision of the Ghana NREG programme in general.

He explained that management of natural resources in a sustainable and transparent manner was a strategic priority to government since it is critical to long term economic growth.

There is therefore the need to build capacities, enhance coordination mechanisms amongst them and above all improve their budget formulation and execution as well as public financial management capacities, Major Tara said.

He said because the NREGTA programme was very important, the World Bank is supporting Ghana with five million dollar grant to help strengthen institutional capacity of the key Ministries and agencies in the natural resources and environmental sectors.

The Chief Director said the first phase of the NREG programme was concluded in 2013 and all donors supporting the programme including the World Bank, Royal Netherlands Embassy, DFID, and AFD, except the European Commission, have ended their financial support.

He said under the first phase, several specific reforms, such as the finalisation of the Forest and Wildlife Policy, Climate Change strategy and policy as well as the passage of six regulations to give effect to the Minerals and Mining Act of 2006 were made.

He said in spite of the NREG, the effect of the exploitation of the environment by both the legal and illegal mining and forest sector activities was still severe and therefore NREGTA had been designed to analytically drill deeper and unlock legal, regulatory and institutional bottlenecks in the natural resources and environmental sector to support the implementation of NREG reform programme.

Dr Waqar Haider, Programme Leader of the World Bank, said his organisation was supporting the programme since it addresses priority environmental and natural resources management issues across the mineral and forestry sectors as well as priority issues of climate change response and environmental management.

All these are the areas that are prominent in their contribution to the national economy and poverty reduction. They are also prominent in their links to phenomena that worry Ghanaians such as galamsey and loss of forests. NREGTA helps the governments efforts to tackle these issues Dr Haider said

Mr Franklin Ashiadey, Coordinator of NREG said the second phase of the programme would now be rolled out, and that the NREGTA would engage stakeholders including civil society organizations and others while building capacities to help in implementing main activities.