In addition, it was to prepare farmer based organisations to require better accountability from Governments. Topics discussed include, what a budget is, budget process and analysis, budget tracking and monitoring, among other topics.
Mr. Sylvester Bagoora, an expert on Budget Advocacy, in a presentation, said, to identify a good budget, farmers need to look for the consistency of how the budget interacts with the medium term development plan and the long term development.
He said, the training will enable participants to obtain the view on budget, as a useful and accessible policy and governance document.
This, Mr. Bagoora said, will stimulate the interest of participants to study, analysis and track budgetary allocations, particularly, for implementation measure in the agricultural sector. He said, there are so many indicators that the farmers can use to input into the budget, which includes, the submission of inputs, in the form of reports, documents and letters to the elected representatives in Parliament.
Also the “Monitoring of projects and programmes, to provide feedback to policy makers and collate views, case studies and stories on situation of small scale farmers, to feed into policy review,” he added. Mr. Bagoora noted that, issues can also be made through media discussions, public debate and other advocacy platforms. Madam Victoria Adongo, Programme Coordinator at PFAG, said, the trainees are expected to educate their members about what they have learnt.
She said, this will enable them to contribute meaningfully to national and district budgetary discussions, when the need arises. “The workshop is to develop the capacity of the farmers in the budgetary process as a policy tool for national development”, she added.
She urged the participants to take the training workshop serious, to enable them improve on the budgetary allocation of the small scale farmers as compared to other farmers in the agriculture sector. Mr. Benjamin Kanati, a participant, told the Ghana News Agency that. the training has given him more insight into what the budget process entails.
Source: GNA View original story at Modern Ghana or Government of Ghana.
