The Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), is researching into the impacts the COVID-19 pandemic has had on government’s policies and interventions on energy, business and health sectors of the economy.

The research, done in collaboration with the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH (GIZ), is to help design strategies and recommend solutions for possible negative impacts of the pandemic and also propose measures to improve on the possible positive effects.

This was made known at a focused group discussion, held in Tamale, and organized by the CDD-Ghana to seek participants’ views on the impacts of COVID-19 on government programmes and interventions, as part of the research.

It brought together representatives from Civil Society Organizations, non-governmental organizations, traditional leaders, market women, some officials from public and private institutions among others.

Mr Abdulai Balaarah, Programmes Analyst at CDD-Ghana, said one of the key objectives of the study was to highlight the main reform strategies of the government and how these reforms have been affected by the pandemic.

He said the research would “examine the fiscal impact of the COVID-19 mitigation measures carried out by the government on the public finance situation of the country and examine how principles of good governance were affected during the pandemic and while executing COVID 19-response measures, also in comparison with other African countries”.

He added that “the study will shed light on government projects that had to be stopped due to COVID-19 and provide key analysis for potential recommendations on interventions by the government and international development organizations”.

Discussing some of the impacts of the pandemic on government flagship programmes such as the “One District One Factory (1D1F)”, some of the participants believed that resources and funds allocated for establishing some factories were diverted to mitigate the spread of the virus, which they said had an adverse effect on job creation for the youth.

They also believed that there was some improvement on the livelihoods of individuals who were in the supply chain of COVID-19 Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and other essential goods and services, among other impacts.