Accra, June 14, GNA - Chief Directors of six Municipal and District Assemblies (MDAs), Director-General of National Development Planning Commission and three other directors of MDAs will undertake a monitoring and evaluation study tour in Japan next July.

The tour, to expose the officials and other top-level technocrats to monitoring and evaluation (M&E) practiced at various levels of administration in Japan, is to enhance their knowledge on the role of evaluation in results and policy management.

In addition, it is expected that the experienced gained by the delegation would enrich their advice to the political leadership on desired direction of (M&E) in Ghana.

Mr Romeo Adu Tutu, Director-General Administration, Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, announced this at a workshop on strengthening M&E capacity of staff of the ministry in Accra on Tuesday.

He said through the support of Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the ministry was benefiting from the assistance of a consultant on the knowledge and skills in M&E.

Mr Tutu said as part of the workshop, presentations would be done on 93JICA's M&E system and learning from Evaluation Results in Ghana and Africa," 93Practice of Evaluation: Case study of EX-Post Evaluation of JICA's Grant Aid Project for Rehabilitation of Trunk Roads in Ghana."

He said about 75 government officials were expected to benefit from training courses and study tours organised by the Japanese Government by the end of 2012.

Mr Tutu expressed the hope that JICA would continue to support the next project currently under discussion.

The project was expected to broaden the focus on monitoring and evaluation at all levels of governance and on the implementation of government's funded as well as development partners funded policies, programmes, projects and activities.

He said the project was being implemented when the Ministry was in the process of establishing a functional M&E unit to co-ordinate activities of all its divisions.

It would also monitor and evaluate the implementation of short and medium term plans of those divisions, departments and agencies, he added.

Mr Kochi Kito, Senior Representative of JICA in Ghana, said as Ghana moved towards more equitable and sustainable middle income country, monitoring and evaluation would become very crucial for effective and efficient management of resources.

He said most training courses in Japan were combined with study tours to Vietnam, observation of actual ex-post evaluation and pilot evaluation exercise in Ghana.