Our constitutional arrangement is a hybrid of the Executive Presidency (US) and parliamentary democracy (UK). In the US, the central office of government is The Office of the President, popularly called the White House; while in the UK it is made up of three offices:

i) The Prime Minister's Office, also commonly called (No.10) Downing Street, ii) The Cabinet Office, and

iii) H M Treasury

Both the White House and No. 10 are staffed by civil servants and special advisors who support the President and Prime Minister and ensure that they can carry out their wide range of functions from international diplomacy to (domestic and economic) policy making.

The United States

Under the current Bush White House, there is an Office of Strategic Initiatives - responsible for giving coherence to the President's domestic agenda and turning it into reality. The office is headed by President Bush's most trusted political advisor, Karl Rove. Until Rove's recent "promotion" as Deputy Chief of Staff - at the beginning of Bush's second term in office - his intentionally banal title "Senior Advisor" tells you everything and nothing about what Karl Rove does. Before the regularization of his anomalous position, Karl from behind the scenes managed the intersection of policy and politics at the White House.

The Domestic Policy Council (DPC) coordinates the domestic policy-making process in the White House and offers policy advice to the President. The DPC also works to ensure that domestic policy initiatives are coordinated and consistent throughout federal agencies. Finally, the DPC monitors the implementation of domestic policy, and represents the President's priorities to other branches of government. Under President Bush, the DPC oversees major domestic policy areas such as education, health, welfare, justice, federalism, transportation, environment, labour and veterans' affairs.

The National Economic Council (NEC) was established in 1993 within the Office of Policy Development and is part of the Executive Office of the President. It was created for the purpose of advising the President on matters related to US and global economic policy. By Executive Order, the NEC has four principal functions:

i) to coordinate policy-making for domestic and international economic issues,

ii) to coordinate economic policy advice for the President,

iii) to ensure that policy decisions and programmes are consistent with the President's economic goals, and

iv) to monitor implementation of the President's economic policy agenda - in agriculture, commerce, energy, financial markets, fiscal policy, healthcare, labour and Social Security.

The Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) was established by the Employment Act of 1946 to provide the U.S. President with objective economic analysis and advice on the development and implementation of a wide range of domestic and international economic policy issues.

The United Kingdom

In the UK, there is a Strategy Unit (PMSU) located in the Cabinet Office which provides the Prime Minister with in-depth strategy advice and policy analysis on his priority issues. The unit currently has three specific roles:

" To carry out strategy reviews and provide policy advice in accordance with those policy priorities

" To support Government Departments in developing effective strategies and policies - including helping them to build their strategic capability

" To conduct occasional strategic audits, and to identify and effectively disseminate thinking of emerging issues and challenges for the UK Government

The PMSU works alongside departments and others. The unit was set up in 2002, bringing together the Performance and Innovation Unit (PIU) and the Prime Minister's Forward Strategy Unit (FSU). The head of the Unit also doubles as the Prime minister's Chief Adviser on Strategy at No. 10.

There is also the Prime Minister's Delivery Unit which was established in June 2001. The Unit's overriding mission is to ensure the delivery of the Prime minister's top public service priority outcomes.

The Delivery Unit works in partnership with the Treasury, No. 10, other parts of the Cabinet Office and stakeholder departments, to assess delivery and provide performance management for key delivery areas, and has a shared responsibility with the Treasury for the joint Public Service Agreement (PSA) target.

"Improve public services by working with departments to help them meet their PSA targets, consistently with fiscal rules".

In the first year, the Delivery Unit set the delivery agenda and in Year 2 it established delivery principles across Whitehall. During Year 3 the Unit accelerated and intensified the drive for results through:

" Ruthless prioritisation - with enhanced Delivery Unit focus on the Prime Minister's highest priority public service delivery areas, where the Delivery Unit did add most value to delivery outcomes by 2005;

" More vigorous challenge - including a tailored programme of review and challenge meeting; and

" Stronger problem solving and deeper collaboration - through a tailored, joint programme of work package drawing on the full Delivery Unit problem-solving portfolio.

A team of around 40 people, drawn from the public and private sectors, carry out the Unit's work. The Unit also draws on the expertise of a wider group of Associates with experience of successful delivery in the public, private and voluntary sectors.

Post of Senior Minister

When Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's charismatic, controversial founding father stepped down as Prime Minister in 1990, he was immediately appointed to the post of Senior Minister in the cabinet. Last year, he was elevated to the position of Minister Mentor after his son won the election and also became Prime Minister. In From Third World To First - the second volume of the bestseller story of the transformation of Singapore, the former British trading post into a thriving Asian metropolis with the world's fourth highest per capita income - Lee Kuan Yew wrote:

…Our climb from per capita GDP of US $400 in 1959 (when I took office as Prime minister) to more than US $12,200 in 1990 (when I stepped down) and US $22,000 in 1999 took place at a time of immense political and economic changes in the world. In material terms, we have left behind our Third World problems of poverty. However, it will take another generation before our arts, culture and social standards can match the First World infrastructure we have installed.

A New Approach

During the same period that the Asian Tigers - Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea, etc. - managed to completely transform their economies, the economy of Ghana for almost twenty years, under the NDC (ERP, SAP, Enhanced SAP) grew, on the average, at a rather slow rate of less than 5% annually. Today, under the NPP, we have been doing a little over 5% average GDP growth per annum. These figures, unfortunately, are far below the 7% threshold required by both the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA), and the 8% minimum target, if the country is to attain a middle income status within the shortest possible time.

To achieve the above two targets demands that we positively change the way we do things in Ghana - plan and manage our economy - and I couldn't agree with the president more on this matter.

In fact, today, even the advanced countries have come to realize the need for some sort of government intervention in the economic management process. Virtually all governments are at present engaged in one way or another, to a small or large extent, in planning and regulation of economic activities.

Apart from the inherent limitations of most mathematical models for planning, there is a much more fundamental consideration that renders the planning procedures of the advanced countries inapplicable for the less developed ones. These procedures were developed for economies with mature, efficient, and highly flexible production systems. Therefore, they assume a high mobility for all factors of production and that the producers are both willing and capable of responding to policy measures.

The principal concern of the advanced countries is with the stimulation of demand to meet potential supply, and their development policies and plans therefore consist mainly of guidelines for the allocation of resources along the various economic sectors and separate regions, in order to maximize the national product, income, and employment. Such policies include, in particular, monetary and fiscal measures regarding, for example, taxes, subsidies, and price regulation.

This approach is not effective in dealing with the conditions of developing countries. Here the problem is not that of stimulating demand, but creating an effective system of supply, (inability of producers to respond to demand). The lack of response derives from a number of reasons, the most important being defective institutional arrangements that prevent the producers from introducing the necessary changes in the utilization of resources.

Moreover, policy measures evolved in the advanced countries are based on "modern" behaviour patterns that have no relevance to traditional societies, characterized by completely different social codes. It is therefore unrealistic to expect the producers in developing countries to adapt smoothly and efficiently to policy measures that are effective in Western societies.

The planning methods and policies that seem to be effective in Western countries are therefore unsuitable for the needs of the developing countries. The goals are different, as are the institutional arrangements on which these methods are based. What the developing countries need is, first and foremost, institutional reform, to lay the foundations for an effective supply system. Without prior institutional adjustments, the desired results will not be attained, because what is needed is to change the "way of doing things" - the traditional structure and pattern of behaviour.

Planning and Budgeting.

Development planning can be carried out at any of three levels: i) National (macro planning),

ii) Family (micro planning), or

iii) Regional level.

National planning deals mainly with the allocation of budgetary and basic production factors among economic sectors, with the aim of maximizing output. At this level planning is usually based on statistical data, therefore, it cannot provide for detailed consideration of factors such as institutional structures or the human element of a particular region and/or district. Lacking suitable tools and data, the macro planner is unable to review economic, social, organizational or physical variables separately. Hence planning at the national level is restricted to the formulation of general development policies.

Micro planning, on the other hand, closely examines the primary production units, their problems, economic viability and social determinants. It aims at optimizing employment and income. Regional planning attempts to bridge this gap between the impersonal national level and specific micro units that exist at the local (district) level. The term "regional planning" implies two fold functions. First, such planning serves as a link between macro planning and micro planning, constituting a vertical function. Second, it is planning for the utilization of both human and material resources within a specific area, constituting a horizontal function.

As the name implies, therefore, regional planning is spatially defined and examines both macro and micro data at a sub-national level. However, the term "region" - although may coincide with a political/administrative region - here does not refer to an area for which planning has been specifically designed, but as a "tool" for simulating national development planning.

Its main purpose is to test national sector plans for location coherence in distinct regions and usually does not result in operational programmes for specific area(s), the political/ administrative region(s).

Experience shows that, there are always inconsistencies between the aims and projections of macro and micro planning that requires integration (coordination) at an intermediate level. The simultaneous coordination - not control of the budgets - of the Districts and Centre (vertical coordination) and inter-sectoral coordination (horizontal coordination) will best be accomplished at the level of the regional capitals.

Question: Who sets national targets in planning, 6% or 8%? How is it done? Who determines the resources required at the local levels to achieve those targets?

National targets in planning should, therefore, be arrived at as a result of a two way dialogue between the Centre - Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning (MFEP) or National Development Planning Commission (NDPC)? - and the Regions. Each region will prepare its targets based on the resources available and this will form the basis of a dialogue indicating what the region(s) will be able to contribute to the Centre and what resource and assistance it would require from the Centre, (Ministry of Finance, Donors, etc), to meet both regional and national targets.

Decentralization

To ensure that Ghana has a system of local government and administration which shall, as far as practicable, be decentralized, the 1992 Constitution provided for the establishment of Regional Coordinating Councils (RRC) in each region, and below them are the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs). For purposes of efficiency and effectiveness, each RRC should have attached to it, a professional interdisciplinary planning team, which will perform the functions described above. The MMDAs are supposed to have such planning bodies attached to them, but they are hardly on the ground due to lack of manpower.

Within the context of strategic objectives and/or targets set by the Centre (National Economic Development Plan or Annual Budget) the MMDAs will be required to prepare development plans and budgets - for the twenty-three decentralized MDAs that are supposed to function as part of the eleven departments of the MMDAs - which should not only be an ex-ante expenditure programme but should show funding possibilities and/or revenue estimates.

The district plans and budgets should be discussed at the regional level and after approval will be consolidated and then forwarded to the Centre (Accra) to: i) MFEP or NDPC (?), and ii) the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development (MLDRD) for budget hearing where there will be reviews, criticisms and adjustments before being consolidated.

In the UK for example, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) is responsible for local and regional government - building regulations, housing, planning, fire and rescue, homelessness, regeneration, social exclusion, neighbourhood renewal, sustainable communities and urban policy.

The great democracies do have balance of power between, i) Central and Local Governments, and ii) Central Government and the Legislature. Politics is about power and the best (effective and efficient) way to exercise that power is through Local Government. The thrust of the decentralization policy in Ghana is to promote popular participation and ownership of the machinery of government by shifting the process of governance from command to consultative process, and by devolving power, competence and resources to the district level.

Mr. K.B. Asante (Graphic, Monday, February 11, 2002) believes Accra can be decentralized, now, within the existing law: "Town Councils for Adabraka, Osu, La, Teshie, Kaneshie, etc should be established for Accra. Competent and public-spirited men and women will emerge to serve on these councils to make their towns great. No remote Chief Executive would then be blamed for the stench in town but the Chairman two doors away".

When the President, in his State of the Nation Address in February, 2002, said, "the District Assemblies do not seem to appreciate the full scope of their powers", Mr. Asante had this to say: "It would be helpful if they will be tasked to discharge their obligation as the President suggested. But they cannot do this effectively without a good crop of civil servants on the same level as their counterparts in the ministries (Accra). Why not send a few efficient senior civil servants who have some five years to retire to go to the districts? Some inducements should of course be given. Such officers will not take dictation from the centre and would advise and see to it that the district assemblies exercise their full powers to the benefit of the people".

To achieve accelerated growth and development of the economy will require the raising of the District Assembly Common Fund and Grant-in-Aid from the current level of 5% to a minimum of between 10-15% of total central government revenue. However, this can only be possible and feasible after the successful implementation of the decentralization programme, when the institutional, and absorption capacities of the RCCs, MMDAs and their service delivery have been enhanced through capacity building.