Leonard Shang-Quartey speaking with the journalists
Health advocacy organisation, Alliance for Reproductive Health Rights (ARHR), has called on the government to protect the revenue accrued from the COVID-19 health levy by ensuring that funds are used for only COVID-19 related expenditures.
The Alliance, presenting a review of the country’s health budget to the media in Accra recently said the fund as it is now can be accessed by all, thus exposing it to misuse.
Policy and Advocacy Coordinator, ARHR, Leonard Shang-Quartey, presenting the findings and recommendations of the health budget review said a careful review of the health aspect of the 2021 National Budget Statement and Economic Policy showed steady increment in the government’s funding for wages and salaries but not to goods and services, for instance.
The Coordinator said the government’s allocations to wages and salaries in 2020 for instance, increased by about 22 per cent compared to 2019 allocations, and for 2021 the increment was 27 per cent compared to 2020 figures and 54 per cent compared to 2019 allocations.
Again, compared to wages and salaries, government allocations to goods and services were 0.6 per cent, 0.9 per cent, and 0.6 respectively for 2019, 2020, and 2021, he said.
Mr. Shang-Quartey further said it was also observed that allocations from ABFA for the three years were seen to be fluctuating with a significant increment of about 20 per cent in 2020 from 2019, and a sharp decrease of 44 per cent in 2021 from the previous year.
He said it appeared that the ABFA was being relied on in place of government funding despite its complementary purpose.
“There must be equity in the distribution of the financial resource allocated to all sectors, particularly health, to improve upon the infrastructure and quality of service provision,” he added.
Another key observation by the Alliance, he said, was the fact that expenditure allocation from Internally Generated Funds (IGF) to goods and services was about seven times of what was allocated to wages and salaries and capital expenditure, saying “there appears to be an unwritten agreement about which source (GOG, ABFA, IGF, Development Partners) should hold the different components of the budget more to the convenience of the Government over the years.”
Mr. Shang-Quartey said going by the arguments, the Alliance had the view that the health allocation of the 2021 budget was “nothing to write home about,” if the country wanted to achieve the Universal Health Coverage (UHC) and Sustainable Development Goal targets.
By Jamila Akweley Okertchiri