A considerable amount of World Bank funding is “sitting idly” in Ghana’s Ministry of Finance. This was uncovered during a meeting between officials of both institutions June 18.
Senior finance officials said the disbursement rate of project loans has dropped to 5 percent from 30 percent. There are World Bank-backed projects “for which virtually no disbursements have been made since their approval a significant while ago,” according to The Mail.
Despite the sluggish release of World Bank funding, Ghana is paying consultants hired to manage project implementation units and interest for loans used to back these underperforming projects, the newspaper adds.
According to officials attending the June 18 gathering, World Bank’s “strict” guidelines for project design, appraisal, execution, supervision and evaluation, as well as the dependence on external consultants to operationalize these guidelines may be contributing to the problem of disbursing funds.
