Mr Kofi Asamoah, the Secretary General of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) has expressed the union’s commitment to the implementation of the Single Spine Pay Policy (SSPP).

He said despite the socio-economic challenges, the implementation of the SSPP has been a good public pay policy.

Mr Asamoah was speaking at the 2nd National Forum on the Implementation of the Single Spine Pay Policy at Takoradi in the Western Region.

The two-day forum is being organized by the Ministry of Employment and Labour Relations in conjunction with the Ministry of Finance and its Social Partners.

Participants at the meeting are expected to review the implementation of the SSPP with special focus on the recommendations from the Ho Forum in August 7, 2013 and to agree on strategies for the implementation of the second phase, which focuses on linking pay to productivity in the public sector.

Mr Asamoah also commended the government and its social partners for showing good faith with the implementation of the policy.

He said in spite of the implementation challenges and the increased wage bill associated with the policy there are outstanding issues such as the full implementation of the market premium, the category 2 and 3 allowances, the annual increment outstanding and post-migration issues that needed to be tackled.

Mr Seth Terkper, the Minister of Finance said the implementation of the SSPP has had significant impact on government’s fiscal management.

He said in order to ensure fiscal discipline in the system; government had kept a fine balance between compensation and salaries and wages, as well as interest payments on loans and capital expenditure.

He said interest payments on loans are now higher than capital expenditure and as such the government was taking measures to address them.

Mr Terkper also stated that government, after paying for statutory expenditure, is left with less revenue to spend on capital expenditure.

He said compensation including wages and salaries, social security and gratuity accounts for the greater portion of government’s recurrent expenditure.

He said borrowing was also contributing to the rising interest and that government was devising a measure to tackle the problem.