Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia
Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has outlined plans aimed at fighting corruption in the country in the first year of the Nana Akufo-Addo administration.
Dr. Bawumia said, “Our government has already declared that we will be passing the Right To Information Act, we will make sure that a Special Prosecutor’s Office is set up to prosecute corrupt persons and we will amend the criminal code to move corruption from a misdemeanor to a felony, these are some of the actions we intend to implement this year.”
The Vice President disclosed this while speaking at the opening ceremony of a two-day Regional Anti-corruption workshop themed, ‘Supporting New Beneficial Ownership Transparency Champions, Ghana, Kenya, and Nigeria.’
The workshop organized by Transparency International (TI) Secretariat and the Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII) in Accra brought together key stakeholders from civil society, government, business and law enforcement to collaborate and formulate plans to collect, share and use information to tackle corruption.
Dr. Bawumia, who gave the keynote address, said corruption is very central to the world’s problems costing countries millions of dollars.
“The World Bank shows that some $1.25 trillion are paid in bribes annually, 5% of global annual GDP which is about $2.5 trillion are lost through corruption. Oxfam also indicates that poor countries lose up to $170 billion yearly to tax evasion and that a fraction of this amount could fund health services that could save lives of almost 150 million children,” he disclosed.
He said beneficial ownership is one of the surest ways of dealing with the canker, which erodes public trust in government and deepens economic and political woes.
He reiterated government’s commitment to providing resources with the support of development partners.
“Government recognizes the huge financial implication to this commitment considering constraint fiscal space. However, we are resolved to make the needed resources available for Ghana to put in place an effective and efficient beneficial ownership regime,” he added.
By Jamila Akweley Okertchiri