The Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) has presented 14 pickups estimated at GH¢3.942 million to seven Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to aid in their statistical operations and data collection.
The donation is under the Harmonising and Improving Statistics in West Africa (HISWA) project.
HISWA project being funded by the Government of Ghana through an International Development Agency (IDA) Credit of the World Bank, has been designed to strengthen the statistical systems of participating countries in Africa to harmonise, produce, disseminate, and enhance the use of core economic and social statistics in the various countries in West Africa.
The project is being implemented in the country by the Statistical Service in collaboration with 19 other MDAs.
The beneficiary institutions are the Births and Deaths Registry that received eight of the vehicles, while one vehicle each was given to Ghana Prisons Service, Ghana Police Service, Registrar General’s Department; Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture; Ghana Health Service and Ghana Immigration Service to enhance data collection and monitoring of the MDA statistics units.
Ghana with six other West African Countries (Burkina Faso, Cabo Verde, Cote d’Ivoire, Togo, Sierra Leone, and Liberia), are implementing the project from 2022 to 2025.
In all, 13 MDAs on the HISWA project are receiving both financial and technical support.
These are Ghana Statistical Service; Ministry of Education; Ministry of Employment and Labour Relations; Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection; Births and Deaths Registry; Registrar-General’s Department; Ghana Police Service; Ghana Prisons Service; Ghana Immigration Service; Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture; Ministry of Health; and Ministry of Food and Agriculture.
Presenting the vehicles, the Government Statistician, Professor Samuel Kobina Annim, urged the beneficiary MDAs to ensure that the vehicles are used by their Statistics Units for the purpose for which they were given.
He also emphasised the numerous contributions of the HISWA project towards statistical development in the country including supporting the conduct of the 2021 Population and Housing Census which has so far released 13 reports and the Annual Household Income and Expenditure Survey.
This would enable quarterly Gross Domestic Product (GDP) compilation, improve compilation of the annual GDP by expenditure, estimate regional GDP and provide annual and quarterly labour statistics.
He said an additional seven MDAs – Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resources, Ministry of Works and Housing, Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources, National Communication Authority, National Road Safety Commission, Environmental Protection Agency, and Ministry of Trade and Industry would receive technical assistance from the project.
Prof. Annim said the project was producing a wide range of data from surveys, censuses, administrative and big data from a variety of sources including mobile phones and satellite imagery to address the data needs of the country.
He said the project adopted a system-wide approach to statistics development to engender an integrated, harmonised and interoperable production and use of statistics for policy formulation and monitoring.
BY KINGSLEY ASARE
