Editorial: Mr President, Uncapping Of GETfund Is Good But …

During the presentation of the 2025 budget Statement and Economic Policy of the John Mahama government to Parliament a few months ago, the Finance Minister, Dr Cassiel Ato Forson, told Ghanaians that GH¢3.5 billion had been allocated for the free secondary school education programme for the fiscal year.

“Mr Speaker, the overarching concern about free secondary education has been its quality and the absence of a dedicated source of funding. H.E. President John Mahama has resolved the funding challenge by uncapping the GETFund. This makes available dedicated funds for the full financing of free secondary education and free tertiary education for Persons with Disability (PWDs),” he stated.

Earlier in June 2024, the Executive Director for Eduwatch, an Education policy and research and advocacy organisation, Mr Kofi Asare, stated in a Facebook post that about GHC 32.7 billion was originally allocated to the education sector in the main 2024 budget. This included GHC 3.2 billion to GETFund.

At mid-year, he continued, an additional GHC 1 billion was added to GETFund’s initial allocation for 2024, increasing GETFund allocation to GHC 4.2 billion.

With this revision, he argued, GETFund was receiving 55% of the GETFund Levy accruals (GHC7.6 bn) due to its capping.

According to Kofi’s post at the time, the total revised education budget for 2024 was about          GHC 33.7 billion, which represented 3.3% of GDP, yet below the global benchmark of 4-6%. The above analysis by Kofi Asare clearly points to the fact that the capping of the GETfund did not help in the funding of education in the country.

It is upon the basis of this that The Chronicle welcomes the decision by the John Mahama government to uncap the GETfund and frees more resources to tackle the numerous problems confronting the education sector. But whilst commending the government for the reversal of the decision taken by the Akufo-Addo government, we are also not happy that the Annual Budget Funding (ABF) of the Petroleum revenue is no more going to be used to finance the free SHS. The financing of the latter is now going to rely solely on the GETfund.

Available information indicates that the government intend using this fund (ABF) to pursue the Big Push agenda, where targeted roads in the country will be re-constructed. This is certainly not a bad idea, but the government, in our view, should have sourced for funds from elsewhere for these mega projects instead of using money meant for the free SHS.

As argued by Kofi Asare during one of his recent media engagements, the GHS3.5 billion that have been allocated to Free SHS from the GETfund is meant for consumption – feeding the students. It does not include infrastructural development on the various campuses.

This means there will be huge gap when it comes to the financing of education in the country as the GETfund alone, despite being uncapped, cannot shoulder the problem.

Our understanding is that the payment of fees for the over 150,000 first year public university students as promised by the government is also going to come from the GETFUND. Payment of these fees will amount to billions of Ghana cedis.

Again this is going into consumption and has nothing to do with the putting up of more halls of residence for the universities to absorb ever increasing students.

With above analysis, it is clear that though the uncapping of the GETfund is a welcome news, the burdens that have been imposed on the fund has made the decision useless. As we put this piece together, there are thousands of basic schools throughout the country where classes are conducted under tree shades.

The government through the GETfund should have built modern classrooms for these schools, but the big question is: can the fund sustain these huge investments? The answer is certainly a big no because the bulk of GETfund accruals are being spent on consumption. The Chronicle is, therefore, advising President Mahama and his government to devise a strategy that will help in the proper financing of education in the country.

The situation as we see it now is very dire and unless something dramatic is done, we will be jeopardising education in the country. The government should not gloss over the fact that students passing out from our teacher training universities are clamouring for postings, but if the educational infrastructures are simply not there, how are they going to be absorbed into the system?

It is the hope of The Chronicle that President Mahama and his Education minister, Haruna Iddrisu, are reading this editorial and will start thinking outside the bow on how to raise adequate funds to finance education in the country.

So far, he has started very well and he dares not fail Ghanaians.

 

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