By
Morkporkpor Anku/Mr Julius K. Satsi, GNA
Accra, Sept. 13, GNA – Mr Albert Zeufack, the
World Bank’s Chief Economist for Africa has urged African governments to
strengthen the fight against corruption for easy access to more funds from the
Bank.
He said, “Fighting against corruption is a
sure way of increasing a Country’s Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA)
score or ranking”.
Mr Zeufack gave the advice at the launch of
the 2018 CPIA, which ranked Ghana among the top ten countries, who scored above
3.0 in the Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) for performance based in 2017.
He said Ghana had an average CPIA score of 3.6
in the country-level against an SSA International Development Association
average rate of 3.2 with Rwanda having the highest score of 4.0.
The analysis of the CPIA covered 38 countries
including Rwanda, Senegal, Kenya, Cabo Verde, Burkina Faso, Uganda and Benin
which described the progress the countries are making on improving the quality
of their policies and institutions.
The CPIA is a tool used in measuring the
extent to which countries support sustainable growth and poverty reduction and
consequently, the effective use of development assistance.
It consist of 16 criteria grouped in four
equally weighted clusters including Economic Management, Structural Policies,
Policies for Social Inclusion and Equity as well as Public Sector Management
and Institutions.
Mr Zeufack urged African leaders to pay more
attention to this important tool of measurement and use it accordingly adding
that “The CPIA is important for African countries, not only because a better
score leads to an increase in concessional financing from the World Bank, but
also because it is an excellent tool for policy formulation and monitoring”.
He said the average quality of policies and
institutions in the SSA was broadly unchanged in 2017 and this was a shift from
the deterioration observe in the previous year.
He said in 2017, the regional CPIA score was
3.1 and this average CPIA score for SSA remained slightly below the average of
3.2 for other International Development Association.
Ghana attained her highest performing score of
3.8 in the policies for social inclusion and equity and with a lowest
performing score of 3.3 in economic management cluster.
Madam Punam Chuhan-Pole, the Lead Economist
and Lead Author of the report said, “In 2017, African countries had more
favourable global environment that provided them with space to implement
reforms”.
She said that according to the analysis,
nearly 30 per cent more countries strengthened their policy and institutional
quality in the 2017 compared to 2016, adding that it was an encouraging trend”.
She said favourable global economic conditions
supported a turnaround in economic activity in SSA in 2017, easing pressure on
weak policy frameworks.
GNA