Prof. Henry Kwasi Prempeh, Executive Director of CDD-Ghana, has warned that Ghana’s expanding public sector is straining the national budget unsustainably.
He raised concerns over the unchecked expansion of public sector employment and its impact on state resources.
According to him, without proper review mechanisms in place, the continued growth of the public sector payroll could have dire consequences on the economy, limiting the government’s ability to fund critical sectors such as education, healthcare, and infrastructure.
“We just keep growing the public sector and the public payroll without regard to cost or value,” he lamented, questioning the country’s failure to review and streamline existing institutions.
His concern is shared by many economic analysts who argue that Ghana’s public wage bill has been steadily increasing without a corresponding rise in efficiency or productivity.
According to Prof. Prempeh, successive governments have maintained inherited institutions without assessing their relevance. Instead of phasing out outdated or redundant agencies, new ones are continuously being added, further inflating government expenditure.
“Do we ever pause to review and clean up our books to abolish or defund statutory and other public bodies established by past governments but which no longer serve any useful purpose?”
Prof. Henry Kwasi Prempeh
Prof. Prempeh also believes Ghana’s institutional framework has become overloaded with inefficiencies.
He argued that many public entities still exist despite their limited contributions to national development.
The inefficiencies, he noted, are not just a financial drain but also create bureaucratic bottlenecks that slow down essential government processes.
“Looks like we keep every institution we inherit, as long as it gives us room to appoint people there, while we proceed to add to the number of those bodies by creating new ones.”
Prof. Henry Kwasi Prempeh
Highlighting the problem further, he challenged Ghanaians to identify public bodies that continue to exist but have failed to deliver meaningful results.
Some critics point to agencies that have overlapping functions, leading to wasteful expenditure.
Similarly, Kofi Bentil, Vice President of IMANI Africa, echoed these concerns.
He criticized the duplication of functions among public institutions, arguing that Ghana keeps creating new agencies to perform tasks that existing ones are mandated to handle.
According to him, this trend has worsened over time, as political considerations often drive the establishment of new bodies rather than genuine need.
“Exactly my beef! We just added OSP to do what a number of existing organs are supposed to do from EOCO to CHRAJ and AG etc.,” Bentil remarked, referencing the establishment of the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP).
Urgent Need for Institutional Reform in Public Sector
Furthermore, Kofi Bentil stressed that merely adding more agencies does not translate into improved governance or efficiency.
Instead, he suggested a radical approach—dissolving multiple redundant institutions whenever a new one is created.
He cited examples of countries that have streamlined their public institutions, leading to leaner and more effective governance structures.
“The job is spread out. If we set up a new institution we should cancel and shrink 10 others. The public sector is too large and lethargic. So many people are paid to take care of us and that state but we remain uncared for.”
Kofi Bentil
With Ghana’s economy under pressure, experts argue that the country cannot afford to sustain a bloated public sector.
Calls for a comprehensive institutional audit are growing, with many urging the government to take decisive action in streamlining state agencies.
Policymakers, economic analysts, and civil society groups are advocating for efficiency audits to determine which institutions still serve their intended purpose and which ones should be either merged or scrapped.
A leaner public sector, experts argue, would free up resources that could be channeled into areas of critical need such as infrastructure development and social programs.
The question remains whether the government will take decisive steps to address these inefficiencies or continue to add more institutions to an already overburdened structure.
Ghanaians will be watching closely to see whether these calls for reform lead to meaningful action, or if the cycle of unchecked public sector growth continues.
The economic stakes are high, and the future of Ghana’s governance efficiency may depend on the decisions taken in the coming years.
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