SOEs urged to be accountable and transparent

Accra, Feb. 6, GNA - Professor George Gyan-Baffour, Deputy Minister of Finance, on Tuesday reiterated the need for Managements of State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) to live by the tenets of accountability and transparency in the discharge of their roles.

He said while the Government held the view that autonomy was required to ensure effective performance of SOEs, this must go hand-in-hand with good financial management practices and responsibilities to achieving set goals.

"The State cannot entrust billions of cedis worth of resources into the hands of Boards and Managements without demanding good, transparent and accountable stewardship in return," he said at the signing of performance contract agreements by about 30 SOEs. Consequently, he directed Boards of SOEs to ensure that Annual General Meetings, which constituted a most effective means of getting Boards to account for their stewardship, were held on or before the end of July every year.

The SOEs, including the Ghana News Agency, signed performance contracts aimed at ensuring that the organizations attained the targets negotiated with the State Enterprises Commission (SEC) and the Government.

The Chief Executives of the SOEs supported by the Board of Directors signed the contract on behalf of their respective organizations while the Deputy Minister of Finance signed for the Government.

Prof. Gyan-Baffour urged the Boards to make optimum use of both human and material assets at their disposal while cutting down on waste. He lauded progress that had been made in the performance of SOEs since the introduction of the performance contract about 19 years ago. However, he said, more needed to be done to enable the sector to contribute to Government's revenue drive and employment.

The Deputy Minister expressed concern about the abandonment of projects initiated by some SOEs, saying it tied up capital which otherwise could have been used to expand and generate employment. According to him the problem could be overcome through sound project management techniques and through sound procurement procedures to allow for the completion of these projects on time. He suggested to the SEC to start using the number of uncompleted projects and the completion time as a performance measure to help to reverse the trend.

The Deputy Minister also dwelt on the importance of the payment of dividend by SOEs, saying it was through increased dividend payment that the Government would invest more in the enterprises. There was also the need for the enterprises to adopt the payment of interim dividend as a policy.

Prof. Gyan-Baffour touched on the refocusing of some of the SOEs in order to improve their efficiency by introducing policies to make them increasingly self-financing.

In the process, he said, relevant SOEs would be given full commercial mandate with full autonomy to enable them to directly access local and international capital markets while the mandate of the SEC would also be reviewed.

Prof. Gyan-Baffour also urged the SOEs to plan their operations and come up with programmes and appropriate budgets together with updated corporate plans and draft performance by November each year to ensure that negotiation of the contracts was concluded and signed by December 31 each year.

This, he said, would ensure that all SOEs had approved budgets to work with at the beginning of every New Year.

Prof. Gyan-Baffour called on Boards and managements to work as a team to ensure the attainment of targets enshrined in the contract. Mr Frank Ocran, Chairman of the SEC, asked Boards and Managements to go beyond the symbolic signing of the contracts to making sure that they met the targets negotiated.

He said the improved performance by SOEs would help to remove the negative perception that they were a drain on Government resources. Mr Ocran urged the SOEs to use the Annual Public Sector Awards and the President Excellence Awards for Innovation to build a new image. He emphasized the need for a good maintenance culture of facilities such as buildings and vehicles, saying it was one of the surest ways to enhance the working environment in the various organizations. Besides, he said, prudent management of the resources provided for cost effective running of the organizations.

Mr Ocran said the SEC would continue to make maintenance one of the key contract performance and measurement tools.

He called on managements of the organizations to make effective use of Information and Communication Technology to enhance corporate planning and improve on the documentation process.

In this direction, SEC is in discussion with the national ICT Committee to help organizations to develop their own draft ICT policy. He urged managements of SOEs to cooperate with the team from the committee who would visit their offices to provide guidelines as to how they could fashion out an ICT policy for their organizations. Mr Ocran said the Commission would continue to provide timely and quality professional and technical support to all parties to the contract to ensure improvements in efficiency, productivity and financial returns to government on investment.

The SOEs included Ghana Broadcasting Corporation; Graphic Communications Group; New Times Corporation; Electricity Company of Ghana; Volta River Authority; Volta Lake Transport; Irrigation Company of Upper Region; irrigation Development Authority and Precious Minerals Marketing Company.