Accra, May 18, GNA - A national stakeholders forum is to be held next week Thursday to start Ghana's self-assessment process under the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM).

The Reverend Professor Samuel Adjepong, Chairman of the National APRM Governing Council, who announced this on Tuesday said the workshop was to create national ownership and leadership of the APRM as an open, participatory and transparent process that fostered dialogue and trust in the pursuit of national development goals.

The workshop, to be attended by a delegation from the APR Secretariat under Dr Chris Stals, a member of the APR Panel, would also give stakeholders the opportunity to harmonise views, iron out differences and establish a common basis to understand the philosophy, rules and processes that underlay the APRM.

"The forum will provide a platform for national understanding, participation, knowledge sharing and convergence of the appropriate methodology to approach the APRM process."

A Memorandum of Understanding is to be signed between the Government of Ghana and the APR Support Mission as part of the forum. Prof Adjepong said to underscore the review as a broad-based national exercise it would assess governance in four main areas of democracy and good political governance, the pursuit of sound economic policies, the accountability and transparency of corporations, employees among other things and socio-economic development, which would look at the well-being and the standard of living of Ghanaians.

To assist in the technical work that the review entailed, the Governing Council had engaged four independent technical review teams to look at specific areas. They included: The Center for Democracy and Development, Centre for Economic Policy Analysis, Private Enterprise Foundation and the Institute of Statistical Social and Economic Research.

Prof Adjepong said the Council chose the four organizations because of their records of accomplishment, autonomy, integrity and professionalism. They would assist the Governing Council to administer, collate and analyse the country's self-assessment questionnaire that would be the basis for the Council's APRM report to the APR Panel in South Africa.

He pledged that the Council would be independent, impartial, objective, and professional in the performance of its tasks, adding that it was the only way to make the APRM review process a truly national exercise.

Prof. Adjepong dismissed the erroneous impression that the review would affect only the Executive arm of government. "On the contrary, all the three arms of government namely the Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary will be subjected to the APRM."

Besides, the review would further assess the work of the independent institutions like the Electoral Commission and the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice as well as Civil Society Organisations, including the media and the trade unions. Professor Adjepong called for active participation from stakeholders to make the review process a success.