Government increases salaries of Civil Servants by 20 percent

ACCRA, Ghana (Reuters) -- A 20 percent pay rise for Ghanaian civil servants was broadly catered for in the government's budget for 2000 and should not cause problems, the World Bank's representative in the West African country said on Tuesday.

The government announced late on Monday that the salaries of civil servants, teachers, nurses and members of the judiciary would increase by 20 percent, with effect retrospectively from April 1.

"The economic programme for 2000 did envisage that sort of increase in salaries. It's not surprising, it's not a budget-breaker," Peter Harrold told Reuters. "I think 20 percent was the sort of magnitude they had in mind when they were drawing up the budget late last year," he added.

The announcement late on Monday followed agitation by public sector workers for pay increases to compensate for steep price rises due in large part to high fuel prices and a sharp decline in the value of the West African nation's currency, the cedi.

Before the increases, the lowest paid civil servant was receiving 80,000 cedis ($17) a month, while Supreme court judges took home around 1.4 million cedis ($197) a month .

The government had been apprehensive about yielding to demands for wage increases, fearing it would trigger off further demands from other sectors of the public service. Consumer price inflation in 1999 was 13.8 percent.

The government's initial target was 9.5 percent, which was raised to 12 percent due to higher fuel prices and rising import costs because of the weak cedi.