SEND-Ghana, a Social Enterprise and Advocacy organisation is implementing a project dubbed: “Making the Budget Work for Ghana” to improve access and quality of services in priority programmes in the health and education sectors.

SEND Ghana has observed that budget planning and execution were sometimes inconsistent with each other, along with weak monitoring systems that did not provide timely information on impact of expenditure.

The project, funded by the World Bank under the Global Partnership for Social Accountability (GPSA) programme, will feature thirty poor districts in Ghana to help strengthen accountability and transparency in their budget processes.

It also aimed at empowering CSOs and citizens with the skills and knowledge to monitor budget planning and execution to ensure a more transparent, efficient and effective use of budgetary resources.

Mr Daniel Adotey Akai, the Project Officer of SEND-Ghana, at a four-day workshop for 40 participants, said the project was expected to empower civil society organisations and the public to monitor budget planning and their execution to ensure an open and judicious use of state resources.

The workshop was to strengthen SEND-Ghana teams and other partners’ knowledge and skills needed to implement budget monitoring and advocacy tools, to generate feedback to complement government efforts in monitoring and evaluation framework.

It is also to build the existing engagement between the organisation, its partners and government counterparts, aimed at increasing public budget and service delivery in the education and health sectors.

“The project seeks to address current governance challenges that affect the effective delivery of basic education and health services in poor areas in Ghana.

It will roll-out a holistic approach to link budget planning and execution and its impact on the intended delivery outcomes in the education and health sectors in 30 districts," he added.

He said this would result in increased capacity of relevant Government institutions to tackle and overcome existing challenges in ensuring access and quality of education and health services in poor communities in Ghana.

He said the four-year project would implement SEND's well-tested Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation framework to integrate budget monitoring into service delivery monitoring by building awareness of the national budget, laws and guideline to hold public officials accountable.

Madam Carolina Luisa Varia, a World Bank Representative, said the Bank would continue to support initiatives that enhance the participation of citizens in the budget process.