Funds released by the World Bank for various projects which were said to have been unutilised for some time are now being used on growth-oriented projects. The funds, locked up in the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) are being used for the development of infrastructure such as construction of roads and railways, improvement in water supply, sanitation and job creation. Dr. Kwabena Duffuor, Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, who disclosed this to The Ghanaian Times, said measures had been put in place to ensure the speedy implementation of the approval projects for the various MDAs. As at the end of August this year, the disbursement rate was a little over 30 percent of the $350 million expected to be released to the MDAs annually. Last year, he disbursement rate was less than 10 per cent. "We are working hard to improve the situation to get additional support from our development partners," he said, adding that "the disbursement rate of the project loans has seen some improvement in the last six months and this should be continued in earnest". Dr. Duffuor admitted that Ghana's disbursement rate for World-Bank funded projects/programmes had not been encouraging and gave the assurance that the government would institute the necessary measures to reverse the trend. The Country Director of the World Bank, Ishac Diwan, when contacted expressed satisfaction with the current rate of disbursement and was optimistic that new approved projects would be implemented quickly for the benefit of the people. On July 8, a Times publication headlined: "W.B. Funds locked up at Ministries" quoted Mr. Diwan as attributing the slow process of disbursement to the general weaknesses in the country's implementation of projects. He was reported to have stated that disbursement ratio for last June was 15 percent when budget support was not counted. Mr Diwan's comments followed an article by IMANI centre for Policy Analysis and Education, titled: 'Ghana sits on borrowed time' in which the centre said that some funds approved for various projects were not utilised. The report stated that the disbursement rate of project loans had dropped from just under 30 per cent to 12 percent, and now hovered below five per cent. In his reaction to the IMANI article, Seth Tekper, a Deputy Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, said although some of the issues raised in the article were legitimate, the delay could not be laid at the doorstep of the government alone but the World Bank as well. "The World Bank itself must admit that its procedures and processes are too tedious resulting in the delays in the implementation of projects" he said. Credit: The Ghanaian Times