non subverted means the user agent has the financial capacity to remunerate personnel according to their payment scheme and also fulfil a 20% payment of personnel’s allowance to NSS.
Below is the List Of Non-Subverted Agencies In Ghana
The government is set to wean off eight subvented agencies as part of plans to trim down the wage bill, highly placed sources at the Ministry of Finance (MoF) have told the GRAPHIC BUSINESS.
The sources said the government was hoping to save between GH¢20 million and GH¢25 million when the policy goes live this year. Implementation will be done in phases, spread over three years.
According to the sources, a committee is currently working on modalities for the weaning off. It would include examining the financial performance of the agencies in the last three years and their medium-term projections, to ensure that the projections were achievable.
However, the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC) and the Ministry of Finance, which are leading the implementation process, have declined to name agencies. But GRAPHIC BUSINESS checks have revealed that the list will certainly include the Ghana Water Company Ltd and the Electricity Company of Ghana.
“It will be better we don’t mention the names since we are not restricting ourselves to any particular organisation per se, because we are also in talks widely with other organisations who are actually willing to be weaned off government subvention,” the Chief Executive of FWSC, Mr George Smith-Graham, explained.
The agencies are being guided off the national budget to enable them to clean up their balance sheets, which would enable them to source commercial financing from the market, on the strength of balance sheets.
The government is burnt on making the autonomy of state agencies a standing policy going forward. The move is also part of efforts by the government to rationalise expenditure and lessen the debt profile of the economy.
“This is the policy we are pursuing. If they need to polish up those balance sheets to be able to go to the market, the last thing you would want to do is to create the impression that because they have been on subvention they cannot succeed,” a source at the MoF said.
“I believe that once we have the strategic plans, action plans, or implementation plans, it should be possible for us to ease whatever tension or uneasiness that the agencies may have,” Mr Smith-Graham said.
This could mark a departure from the past where state agencies were weaned off government subvention without being capitalised or given strategic direction.
This time around, the MoF has given the assurance that the affected agencies will be capitalised on properly to enable them to stand on their feet.
In an earlier interview, Mr Smith-Graham explained though almost all the institutions were ready to go off government subvention, it would not be possible for all to comply from the beginning of 2015.
Preparation for the agencies
“We would expect that they would have a strategic plan which would have a clearly stated action and implementation plan,” Mr Smith-Graham said.
As a first step, the committee would alert the government about the readiness of the agencies and get experts to put together a strategic plan, an action plan and an implementation plan for the agencies.
What are subvented agencies?
A subvented agency is a public agency that receives public funds.
3. Classification of public agencies.
Public agencies shall be classified into four categories on the initiative of the Minister in consultation.
with the Minister responsible for the agency concerned and the Minister of Finance.