Ensuring Equitable Development for Ghana

1. Ensuring Equitable Development for Ghana Presented at MDBS Annual Review Workshop Accra 17th May, 2011 Hon. Antwi-Boasiako Sekyere Deputy Minister-MESW

2. Presentation outline • Defining equitable development • Context - Achievements & Challenges • Some Evidence and Issues • Drivers of inequity, and • Some possible Solutions.

3. Defining equitable development • Equal access to economic and social opportunities for all Ghanaians irrespective of socio-economic, cultural and regional barriers. - i.e. giving all economic and social groups equal opportunities to strive and improve their living conditions. • Equal access to development opportunities irrespective of gender disparities. • There is (1) horizontal equity (across regions) and (2) vertical equity (across income/ wealth groups). .

4. Defining equitable development Cont. • Opportunity to contribute to development according to ability and sharing fairly in national gains.

5. Why Equitable Development? • The concept of equity in development is based upon the philosophy of “everybody matters” • promotes social harmony and sense of belonging. • prevents sectarian conflict. • harnesses all the different talents for development. • ensures inter-generational solidarity. (national) • reduces regional disparities.

6. Ghana is among the top ten performers in poverty reduction (Source: Ghana Poverty Assessment: Tackling Poverty in Northern Ghana, World Bank, Accra, 2011)

7. Context -Some Achievements & Challenges Achievements • Poverty Reduction Head counts poverty has fallen from 52% in 1991 to 28% in 2006 (GLSS5). • Ghana is on track on many MDGs-malnutrition, primary school enrolment, and gender disparity. But • Health MDGs- Maternal Mortality, U5 mortality and sanitations are not on tareget. • Major Regional disparity in poverty and extreme poverty eg. Health and Education.

8. Context -Some Achievements & Challenges Challenges • significant regional disparities in poverty between the northern Savanna regions (58%) and the rest of the country (19%) persist(the Savanna belt accounts for 51% of national poverty). • In health, 94% of births by women from the richest quintile are attended by skilled service providers whereas the figure drops to 24% for the poorest quintile. • In Education, a woman from the poorest quintile is likely to have less than one year of education whereas the woman from the highest quintile will have 9 years. Corresponding figures for males are 1.4 and 11 years respectively. • Ghana is unlikely to attain the under-5 mortality and sanitation MDG targets.

9. Some Evidence and Issues • poverty reduction has a regional bias with the Savanna region having the highest poverty and associated food insecurity and vulnerability. • similar regional inequity in access to Basic Services and Human Development outcomes (Health and Education) • The poor, irrespective of location, access fewer and lower quality service with respect to development outcomes.

10. Some Evidence and Issues cont. • on average, about 63% of students going to schools located in districts of the top quintile passed the BECE exams in 2008/09, whereas only 40 percent of students who resided in the districts of the poorest quintile passed. • Eg. Similar inequity patterns are likely to be found in Agric extension, water supply, Health etc

11. Students from the richest 20% represent two thirds of the students in highly subsidized public higher education and also the transition from secondary to higher education favors the richest

12. Regional bias in Poverty Reduction in Ghana(Source: Ghana Poverty Assessment: Tackling Poverty in Northern Ghana, World Bank, Accra, 2011)

13. Regional access to basic health services

14. Regional and Income discrepancies observed in education access and outcomes Average Years of Schooling by Region, Wealth Quintile and Gender Source: Education in Ghana- Improving Equity, Efficiency and Accountability of Education Service Delivery, World Bank February 2011

15. Drivers of inequity patterns in Ghana • inappropriate Economic activities (in poor regions) to stimulate growth. • access to quality education and generational poverty of poor households for human capital for growth and development. • poorer regions have limited opportunities to improve human capital as means of reducing poverty. • pupils from urban districts have greater proportion of funding per student than those in poorer and rural districts e.gAchimota School vrsBunkpuguruPrimary School. • the ratio of pupils to trained teachers (rural vrs urban). • access to Primary and Secondary school is biased towards to wealthier quintiles. • similar situations apply with regard to (access and quality) for access to Health Services delivery in Ghana. • many services designed to help the poor help themselves do not really reach them as shown in the next slide.

16. But despite the pro-poor policy statements- actual current budget allocations reveal an opposite bias Comparing the actual budget to the targeting efficiency in the earlier slide shows the gap between policy and reality. The largest program in the list is school feeding which is biased towards the richer schools rather (see next slide). Excluding this and another large but poorly targeted program NYEP, there is almost a 2% decline in nominal terms and a 10% decline in real terms. These findings are jarring given the stated priorities of the Government. Even the best targeted program from the study above – LEAP – suffers with a constant nominal allocation and a decreased allocation in real terms.

17. Poverty Targeting Effectiveness of Ghana’s Pro-Poor Programs – only one of them(LEAP) has more than 50% of beneficiaries from among the poor (Source: Ghana Improving Targeting of Social programs, Report, World Bank, 2010 )

18. Some Possible Solutions • Ghana needs to move towards more effective targeting of the poor rather than generalized programs (i.e rationalization of social protection expenditure as proposed by MOFEP & MESW under the GSOP). • smproving equity in Health and Educational resource allocation vertically &horizontally • supporting and mainstreaming the newly developed Common Targeting Approach (CTA) for pro-poor programmes initiated by MESW, MOE,MOH,MOFA & MLG&RD. • combine Social Safety nets with self-help human development opportunities. • Adequate Human Resource Capacity to implement Pro-Poor Programmes

19. Some Possible Solutions Cont. • support the rationalization of pro-poor spending by increasing share of public expenditures going to well targeted programs such as Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) and Ghana Health Insurance subsidies for the poor. • support self-help programs such as livelihoods, Micro enterprises, Youth training programs. ( e.g the Indian model) • provide strong incentives (financial etc) for trained teachers to locate to deprived schools. • provide school financing based on numbers of students in a school rather than from central allocation to assure that deprived schools are not treated unfairly.

20. Some Possible Solutions Cont. • tackling poverty in Northern Ghana requires well targeted interventions that support livelihood opportunities and reducing vulnerability to the various climatic, & economic shocks that plague these regions. • human development in the North would also increase the potential for local development. • Given the high poverty in Northern Ghana, geographical targeting mechanisms can be used much more widely, given their high returns in terms of coverage and cost-effectiveness. • New programs such as Labor Intensive Public works programs, could provide income opportunities during the off-season whilst creating public social infrastructure.

21. Some Possible Solutions Cont. • The Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA), as well as the renewed focus Government of Ghana towards decentralized governance, provide an opportunity for a more comprehensive spatial approach to development. • SADA can play a key role in attracting investment to growth to the , on the one hand, while ensuring that public and private investments are well targeted within Northern Ghana to achieve specific results.

22. Conclusion • How do we prevent continuity of inequity in Ghana?. • How do we transform the economy so that all social groups have equal access to development resources and contribute to national development? • How do we share fairly in the national gains • I believe proposal to resolve these issues are contained in the GSGDA.

23. Thank You