FULL TEXT: CDD-Ghana’s report on NPP’s $1m-one-constituency promise

The Ghana Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) on Wednesday, September 16, 2020 made public its preliminary findings on the status of projects promised by Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) during the 2016 electioneering campaign under the ‘$1m-one-constituency.’

The report, which started in 2017, found that overall there was very low community awareness of the pro-poor projects in the constituencies and districts as many of beneficiary communities said they were not aware that the projects were part of the promise.

“Many of the informants complained about the fact that the contractors working on the projects were not from the community and in some cases outside of the region,” said Gildfred Asiamah, a Research Analyst at CDD-Ghana, who presented an abridged version of the report on Wednesday.

The NPP promised in its 2016 elections manifesto to allocate the Ghana Cedi equivalent of $1 million to each of the 275 constituencies.

The promise dubbed the “Infrastructure for Poverty Eradication Programme (IPEP)” seeks to enhance capital infrastructure provision at the district/constituency level as a means to accelerate growth, create jobs and reduce poverty, particularly in rural and deprived communities.

Upon assumption of office, the NPP Government established the Ministry for Special Development Initiatives (MSDI) in February 2017 to implement the IPEP. It also set up three Development Authorities (DAs) and their governing boards as well as an inter-Ministerial Oversight Committee.

Also, the government set up a ten-member ad-hoc committee to undertake constituency infrastructure needs assessment.

After that, the MSDI in 2018 began selected government priority infrastructure projects across all the 275 constituencies under the IPEP

CDD-Ghana in 2017 launched the ‘IPEP Tracker’ project to monitor the implementation of IPEP.

The overall goal of the IPEP Tracker project is to contribute to efforts to eliminate corruption by ensuring transparency and accountability in the implementation of the IPEP.

Below is CDD-Ghana’s preliminary report.

IPEP Tracker Accra Presentation.pdfhttps://drive.google.com