By Linda Naa Deide Aryeetey
Accra, Nov 15, GNA – The Minister for Finance, Mr Ken Ofori Atta, says the government will in 2024 improve financing for two of its social protection programmes by 50 per cent to improve living conditions of the poor and provide free meals to more schools.
The programmes are the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) and the National School Feeding Program (NSFP).
Presenting the 2024 budget, the Minister said the government invested over GH¢740 million to feed 3.8 million pupils one hot meal a day in over 10,000 public basic schools.
“Mr. Speaker, support for beneficiaries of the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme was sustained in 2023, the government invested about GH¢298 million to support 350,000 extremely poor households,” he added.
Mr Ofori Atta said the government’s flagship Free Senior High School and TVET Programmes continued to create and expand access to secondary education in the country.
“In a generation’s time, when we have a more educated population which sustains social mobility and cohesion, we will appreciate the significance of these decisions and investments,” he said.
He said in the year under review, the government supported a total of 448,000 first year Senior High School (SHS) students, bringing the total beneficiaries for the 2022/2023 academic year to 1.3 million students.
“In 2024, the implementation of this transformative initiative will continue as the government continues to ease the financial burden on parents and guardians in the access and provision of quality basic education,” the Minister said.
He said in 2023, the government also provided feeding grants for 7,500 students in Special Schools and capitation grants to all public basic schools across the country.
The Finance Minister said registration fees of over 471,000 prospective candidates from public Junior High Schools for Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) were paid and that the government would continue to provide opportunities for quality basic education through the capitation grant in 2024.
GNA