- allocation constitutes 77% of sector’s budget
Government will spend some GH¢881million on the Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP) in 2022 out of the total budgetary allocation to the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection (MoGCSP), an analysis of the sector’s budget has shown.
The amount is a significant leap in spending over the last three years on the programme, where allocations rapidly moved from GH¢262million in 2019 to GH¢470million in 2020 and GH¢489million being the amount of money invested in the initiative last year. The total allocation to the ministry this year is GH¢1.14billion.
A break-down of allocation in percentage terms to all subsectors under the ministry shows that the school feeding programme is receiving 77 percent of the entire sector budget for 2022; a phenomenon that can be attributed to government’s plan to enrol more schools onto the programme.
With the massive increase in allocation to the GSFP, stakeholders expect that alleged issues of corruption and fraud which have been associated with the programme in recent years will be curtailed in the 2022 operational year.
However, the demerits of allocating almost all the sector’s budget to the school feeding programme could cause other interventions under the ministry to suffer.
For instance, the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) initiative has an allocation of 17 percent. This may not be enough to expand the LEAP, in terms of coverage and increasing the stipend.
Indeed, the 2022 budget suggests a high probability that government will not expand coverage of LEAP and the target of 350,000 beneficiaries will not be met.
In the year 2020, an amount of GH¢200million was allocated but reduced to GH¢197.5million in 2021. The 2022 budget shows an allocation of GH¢197.5million to LEAP, which is just 0.0002 percentage point increase over the 2021 allocation.
Another subsector – child-trafficking and domestic violence – gets approximately 0.2 percent each: clearly depicting the funds’ inadequacy for the 2022 operational year.
Civil Society Organisations, notably SEND Ghana, with regard to the above disparities are appealing for government to increase the LEAP cash grant above the poverty line of GH¢2.7; and assess and graduate beneficiaries above the extreme poverty line into a productive livelihood.
The organisation said the School Feeding Grant of GH¢1 must also be increased to GH¢2 per head for a student, or much higher, to ensure balanced diet for pupils; as well as the need to fast-track t completion of the Ghana National Household Registry (GNHR) as a matter of urgency, to allow for the identification and targetting of the extremely poor and vulnerable in society.
