We’ve saved Ghana $90m in 2020 – Jean Mensah

The Chairperson of the Electoral Commission of Ghana (EC), Mrs, Jean Mensah, has disclosed that the commission saved the country an amount of USD 90 million by lowering the cost of conducting elections.

She said this during a press conference in Accra on Monday, May 6, 2024.

According to her, the commission has been able to achieve that due to the changes they made in procurement processes for electoral materials since 2020.

“Over the last few months, we’ve invested a considerable amount of time into procuring our materials and logistics for registration exercise and the elections as a whole. Since 2020, we have adopted an open competitive bidding process as the method of our procurement.

“As such, with approximately 95 percent of our procurement advertised in the local newspapers, we are able to obtain value for money for services and for materials. It has equally injected competition into our procurement and drastically reduced the prices at which we procure our materials.

“It is not a wonder that we managed to lower the cost of our election from $13 per head in 2016, to $7.70 per head in 2020 and save our nation a substantial amount of USD 90 million,” she stressed.

She further assured that this year’s general elections will be free and fair as the commission has put all necessary plans in place.

We have effectively distributed all our materials to the regions and districts and we are confident that there will be no short supply. Additionally, our biometric voter registration kits as well as spare kits to serve as backups have been distributed to the regions and districts.

“We have spent the last few months laying the building blocks for peaceful, credible and transparent electoral processes and elections in December 2024 and in addition to the two measures aforementioned, our key building block which relates to the hiring of qualified personnel to assist the commission in undertaken the election has been achieved.”