The Centre for Social Justice, an Accra based think tank, has called on Ghanaian political and public officers to act urgently to halt the scourge of recurrent judgment debt payments that continue to negatively impact the economy, limiting investment into critical sectors.
Launching a report titled: “A 20-Year Review of Judgement Debt Payments in Ghana: Impacts, Causes and Remedies” at a virtual Policy Action Platform on July 1, 2021, CSJ stated that “Addressing the recurring issue of judgment debts would require a combination of strategies geared towards improvement in the State’s efficiency in executing its business on behalf of the public.” Between 2000 – 2019, Ghana has paid over GH¢ 1.8 billion in judgment debts in an economy currently saddled with rising public debt, persistent fiscal deficits, a high youth unemployment rate, and over 30 percent of its population living in poverty. More than 73% of judgment debts arise out of contractual breaches by government and its agencies.
The Policy Action Platform (PAP) of the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) is the Centre’s mechanism for deep engagement with leaders, policy analysts and decision makers on intractable problems that plague the Ghanaian society. It aims to achieve fundamental policy shifts rooted in thorough analysis, reflection and practical recommendations to ultimately impact the lives of ordinary Ghanaians.
In the Report, the CSJ noted that “Ghana as a country, however, lags behind in several other indicators, including health expenditures, under-5 mortality rate, maternal mortality ratio, secondary school enrollment, and gender parity index for secondary school enrollment when compared with the lower-middle-income group averages. As a result, the country cannot afford to waste its limited public resources on judgment debts when faced with enormous development challenges.”
To halt the practice, the CSJ requested for accountability in the stewardship of national resources, calling on the Special Prosecutor and the Economic and Organized Crime Office (EOCO) to investigate all instances of judgment debts in the Fourth Republic (effective 1992) and roundly prosecute all offending political leaders and public officials. Further the CSJ called for a drastic overall of the Attorney General’s office and governance mechanisms to address the contracting and abrogation processes that ultimately lead to the payment of judgment debts.
According to the 2015 Sole Commissioner’s report , a ‘judgment debt’ is “a debt for the payment of which a judgment has been given,” and the judgment “arises on account of a decision by a court of competent jurisdiction or an authoritative pronouncement of an umpire or an arbiter as a result of arbitrational proceedings or through mediation and negotiated settlement as agreed upon between the parties in litigation.”
CSJ is a platform of social change activists who are young professionals and academics with left of center political ideological sympathies, engaging proactively and deliberately in Ghana’s political space. As a Policy Think Tank, it works under five thematic pillars of Health and Equity, Education and Social Transformation, Gender and Social Inclusion, Governance, Legal and Constitutional Affairs, Finance and Economy.
