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A Deputy Minister of Finance, Mrs Mona Helen Quartey, has given an assurance that Ghana has set up legal frameworks and entities to ensure that the future generation benefits from the natural resource revenues. Speaking on the topic: �Preserving export income for future generation in Ghana�, she said because natural resources were exhaustible, the country was ensuring intergenerational equity through prudent current investment and the ring-fencing of inflows for future development. Mrs Quartey was addressing an international conference at the Chatham House at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London. She said the topic was timely given the rapid extraction and export of natural resources and cash crops in Africa and Ghana in particular, explaining that the country was making conscious effort at equity in natural resource revenues. Measures put in place Mrs Quartey mentioned the Ghana Stabilisation Fund and the Ghana Heritage Fund as investments the government had embarked upon to ensure that the future generation was not denied of revenues accruing from the extractive industry. For instance, she said, the Stabilisation Fund was established to cushion the impact on or sustain public expenditure capacity during the period of �unanticipated petroleum revenue shortfalls,� while the Heritage Fund was to provide an endowment to support the development for future generation. In 2007, when the country discovered large petroleum deposits and it became necessary to avoid pitfalls of resource management resulting from the country�s experiences with cocoa and gold revenues, there was a general consensus to learn from the past and from the experiences of other oil producing countries. �Shortly after the discovery of petroleum in Ghana, an international forum was organised where various countries made presentations on what has worked and what has not in their management of petroleum revenues,� she told the conference. According to her, the international conference was followed by national consultations and a survey to solicit the views of Ghanaians on how to manage petroleum revenues. �The respondents were almost unanimous in advocating that special funds be set up, separate from the Consolidated Fund, to receive petroleum revenues to maximise the tracking and transparency of the revenues,� she explained. Agenda for change �This is what set the tone for the agenda for change � a move away from business as usual towards natural resource governance, with the view to making natural resources a blessing rather than a curse,� she disclosed. Consequently, she said, some African countries had developed spending and saving mechanisms that guaranteed both value for money for current spending and ensured intergenerational equity. She announced that governments had set up, �rainy-day funds� in a bid to secure natural resource revenues and to leverage such resources for infrastructure development and as a defence against commodity price decline. �This marked the genesis of what has become known as Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) in Africa, the emphasis of which has been on intergenerational equity, infrastructural development and reserve buffers,� Mrs Quartey explained. Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) are state-owned investment funds which are funded by the proceeds from commodity exports, fiscal and/or trade surpluses and privatisations, with their main objective being the investment in the real and financial assets. Touching on the African experience, she said preserving export income for future generations was part of the broad objective of ensuring natural resource governance in Africa.