Accra, May 26, GNA - Parliament on Wednesday inaugurated a newly established Parliamentary Platform on Multi Donor Budget Support (MDBS) to bring the Legislature closer to development partners and create a forum for constant engagement on policy related issues.

The platform will create a forum for long term engagement on policy issues and information sharing for the implementation of new strategies and strengthening partnership for parliamentary governance. It will also link Parliament to the Millenium Development Goals and the proposed Medium Term Development Framework and other national initiatives. Justice Joyce Adeline Bamford-Addo, Speaker of Parliament, who inaugurated the Platform, said the vulnerability of the economies of developing countries including Ghana was such that augmenting the national budget with such initiative should be welcomed.

She said that since the inception of the MDBS support framework, significant support had been extended to Ghana. Justice Bamford-Addo said the MDBS had committed $497 million to support Ghana's budget last year, which according to her had pushed development in the country to appreciable level though not to the level envisioned.

She commended the government for committing itself to making sound micro-economic policies, budgeting, public financial management accountability to the citizenry, sustaining the peace and good governance. The Speaker said that "The declared official focus of the developing countries after the cold war on aids or development support is towards poverty alleviation and effective promotion of development. "There persist inherent problems which prevent the recipient country from taking total control of the steering wheel from the driver's seat." Justice Bamford-Addo noted that the preclusion of Parliament which she described as the embodiment of the will of the people in the MDBS in Ghana over the years had not gone down well with many legislators.

Justice Bamford-Addo stressed that the role of Parliament was crucial in the achievement of many of the objectives of the MDBS and said that Ghana qualified for package because of the country's level of development in parliamentary democracy. "Parliament is the only institution vested with the power of oversight of the executive, which role the Forth Republican Parliament has played over the years in spite of difficulties," the speaker said. She hoped that development partners would use this platform and the subsequent discourse to discuss and develop the requisite training for both Members of Parliament and staff of parliamentary service. Mr. Cletus Avoka, Majority Leader in Parliament, said the recognition of Parliament by the MDBS was a marked departure from the past where it was a taboo for development partners to talk to the legislature and commended them for reaching out to the law makers. He said Parliament that drove the allocation of resources to finance activities under the MDBS, had reciprocal responsibility to ensure that the use of those funds reflected the intendment of Parliament. Mr. Avoka noted that Parliament, which was constrained in many ways in the execution of its mandate, also faced many difficulties in the allocation of resources to various sectors of the economy. "When budget is submitted Parliament can hardly make significant alterations to what has been submitted by the executive," he said. Mr Avoka appealed to the Minister of Finance and Economic Planning to make available relevant and timely information on the budget to enable Parliament to effectively analyse the financial statement. Mr. Fredrick Opare-Ansah, Minority Chief Whip, said the engagement between Parliament and the development partners was long overdue as they recognized that Parliament had a key role to play in the attainment of MDGS. 26 May 10