The Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) is scheduled to be among the first state agencies to be weaned off government’s subvention early next year, as efforts to cut the state’s wage bill and address the current account deficit gathers momentum, B&FT has gathered.
The decision is a result of implementing the recommendations from the famous Single Spine Pay policy review forum in Ho a couple of years back, which identified a number of state agencies that could unilaterally finance their operations without government’s subvention.
So far, government has identified 12 subvented agencies -- including VRA and DVLA -- which have the capacity to be on their own with regard to payment of their personal emoluments and are being prepared to be weaned off government subvention.
Officials of the EPA are seemingly excited about the prospects of enhancing their revenue generation capacity and managing their own finances in view of the final wean-off.
The Acting Director of Environment Assessment and Audit of the EPA, Mr. Kwabena Badu-Yeboah, said the Authority is finalising its business strategy to help enhance internally generated revenue in addition to its traditional sources of revenue such as fees, charges and fines.
“This will help us to employ more technical staff and also compensate ourselves adequately when we are taken off government’s subvention.”
However, some businesses fear removal of the EPA from government’s subvention will cause fees charged by the Authority to increase substantially a statement officials of the Authority have played down.
According to some EPA officials, though fees and charges of the Authority may go up they won’t be that arbitrary since the Authority is still part of the fee-charging agencies of the state -- which fees need to be approved by a majority of the 275-member legislature in order to make it binding.
The wean-off exercise of government is basically to reduce its expenditure and also ensure that organisations operate more effectively and in a more business-like manner in order to become sustainable and profitable.
The IMF has penned the country’s wage bill as one of the factors that threaten its fiscal position and urged government to contain it.
According to the provisional fiscal figures provided by the Finance Ministry, for the first seven months of this year government expended a little over GH¢5billion on wages and salaries of public sector workers.
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