Parliament has approved a total of GH¢924m GETFund allocation for the 2018 fiscal year, with the largest tranche of GH¢328million or over 35 percent earmarked for projects and programmes at tertiary institutions.
According to the report of parliament’s Committee of the Whole, secondary and basic schools were allocated GH¢256m and GH¢253m respectively.
Others, such as the GETFund secretariat and Ministry of Education also received GH¢66m representing 7.20percent.
The Committee report also noted that GETFund proposed an amount of GH¢20m for Members of Parliament (MPs) to undertake projects and the monitoring of the projects in their constituencies.
For 2018, GETFund will focus on the provision of social intervention programmes such as Capitation Grant, Feeding Grant to Special Schools, Senior High School subsidy for continuing students, Additional subsidy for continuing Day students of Senior High Schools, Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) subsidy, Counterpart Funding (development of skills for industry projects).
The Fund will also continue the implementation of the following projects and programmes in 2018: Fencing of schools with high risk of encroachment, provision of white boards in schools, construction of kindergarten facilities and regulatory and policy reforms.
Other components of the planned programmes and projects of the Fund include: academic facilities and infrastructure, allocation of funds to the Students Loan Trust Fund, Scholarships and procurement of teaching and learning materials.
Allocation for Projects
An amount of GH¢60,000 will be provided for each MP for the funding of education related projects in their respective constituencies.
This will amount to a total of sixteen million, five hundred thousand cedis (GH¢16,500,000.00).
With regards to the monitoring of education related projects, each MP will be allocated GH¢15,000, amounting to a total of GH¢4,125,000.00.
Capping of Earmarked Funds
It came to the notice of the Committee that the capping of earmarked funds as provided for by the Earmarked Funds Capping and Realignment Act, 2017 (Act 947) has reduced drastically, funds that should accrue to the GETFund.
For instance, for year 2018, an estimated amount of GH₵1.8billion is expected to accrue to the Fund from the two and one-half percent of the prevailing rate of the Value Added Tax.
However, due to the provisions of Act 947, the estimated accrual of GH¢1.8billion to the Fund, has been capped to GH¢924m.
