The government spent World Bank's US$35 million on Emergency preparedness and response plan-Finance Minister

The government of Ghana has spent a whopping sum of US$230 million from the World Bank on the preparation of an Emergency Preparedness and Response Plan.

Details of funding, according to the finance minister, include the Fast Track Covid-19 Facility(FTCF) of US$230 million announced in March 2020 to enable countries to deal with the pandemic. The finance minister indicated further that a GARID CERC fund of US$65million which amount he indicated was drawn from the existing World Bank's funded Greater Accra Resilient and Integrated Development (GARID) project by activating the Contingency Response Component(CERC) of the project.

Additional Financing (AFI) of US$130.0 million in November 2020 to strengthen and scale up the gains of EPRP, he noted. "Mr. Speaker, an additional Financing (AF2) of US$200.0 million was secured in 2021, largely for the acquisition and deployment of covid- 19 vaccines to support other sources of financing of the vaccination program under the plan. The plan sought to achieve the following

1. strengthen coordination of the overall preparedness activities, strengthen the capacity of regions, priority health facilities, and points of entry to prevent, rapidly detect, investigate and control any covid-19 outbreak in Ghana, strengthen national capacity for laboratory surveillance and diagnosis, build capacity for early diagnosis, case management, contact tracing, and infection prevention and control, ensure minimum health logistics are in place in prioritized regions, health facilities and points of entry for Preparedness and laboratory capacity sustained for timely and quality testing of covid-19 samples and increase public awareness on covid-19 risk mitigation and response measures.

The finance minister further added that other funds were sourced to support the budget which included the US$ 1 billion from the International Monetary Fund, GHS10 billion from the Bank of Ghana, GHS 69.3million from the African Development Bank, and US$99.7million from the European Union(EU).

"Mr. Speaker, it must be noted that the status of utilization of the funds to finance the covid-19 measures excludes funds of the National Covid-19 Trust Fund and the Ghana Private Sector Covid-19 fund", the finance minister indicated.

Report by Prosper Kwaku Selassy Agbitor