The Senior Minister, Yaw Osafo-Maafo has commended the academia for lending excellence to support the program to reform the public and private sectors for accelerated development.

Yaw Osafo-Marfo says the Rector of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration, GIMPA, Prof Philip Ebow Bondzi-Simpson and the Dean of the University of Ghana Business School Prof Justice Nyigmah Bawole, have been very instrumental in fine tuning policies aimed promoting business in the country.

According to him, the previous government prepared what he described as a good document on public sector reform. The NPP administration however decided to extend the reforms to the private sector and so there was the need to review and re-orient the document to that effect.

A technical team comprising about 18 people was constituted “we decided in this occasion to bring on board academia” he said.

Mr. Osafo Marfo said the two professors contribution to the review as part of the technical team were very strategic and beneficial to the success of the re-orientation of the document to support the private sector.

He was speaking at a forum on public sector reform organized by the Ghana Integrity Initiative, the local chapter of Transparency International.

Public sector reform has featured prominently on every governments agenda in the fourth republic. The sector has been criticized for being bureaucratic and lacking the flexibility to adopt to the changing climate of business needed to support growth.

A lot of effort have also been put into decentralizing with the aim to distributing power and wealth to assemblies to champion development at the community level.

The Senior Minister is hopeful the successful implementation of the reforms being worked on, will not only make the public sector more efficient, it will also equip the private sector, which is the engine of growth to perform much.

A good public sector will also effectively provide the government support needed by private business to succeed, leading to accelerated national development.