Ghana : Indicators

Under the Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) with the European Union, there is an obligation to set up an Independent Monitor. In fulfilment of this requirement, the Forestry Commission (FC) in June 2011 advertised for the position of an Independent Monitor even though the wood tracking system and other key systems in the VPA process were still not yet in place.

Though this was a welcome step and a concrete demonstration of the FC’s efforts to implement the VPA, but it is surprising that the results of the tendering process had not yet been released at the time of this assessment. The Aide Memoire from the EU-Ghana Joint Monitoring and Reporting Mechanism mission in March 2012 stated “the IM will be contracted by May 2012” (http://www.fcghana.org/vpa/assets/file/JMRM%20Mission%204.pdf), but to date there has been no announcement, and it is still not clear when the Independent Monitor would be engaged.