Government invested about GH¢298 million under LEAP in 2023 – Finance Minister

Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta has disclosed that support for beneficiaries of the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme was sustained in 2023.

He said the government invested about GH¢298 million to support 350,000 extremely poor households.

According to him, in 2024, the Programme will improve the financing by 50% and will continue to provide meals to more schools to enhance basic school enrollment.

On free SHS and TVET education, the Minister said the Government’s flagship Free Senior High School and TVET Programme continues 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.

In the year under review, we continued to support a total of 448,000 first-year 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”, he added.

Touching on capitation grants, he said the Government continues to ease the financial burden on parents and guardians in the access and provision of quality basic education.

“To this end, we provided feeding grants for 7,500 students in Special Schools and capitation grants to all public basic schools across the country.

Additionally, the registration fees of over 471,000 prospective candidates from public JHS for the BECE were paid to guarantee that all candidates will sit for the examination. Government will continue to provide opportunities for quality basic education through the capitation grant in 2024.”

The National Health Insurance Scheme he noted witnessed an expansion in coverage, with 16 million active members as of September 2023 – representing 80 percent of the targeted population of 20 million.

He said efforts to integrate the Ghana Card into the enrollment system are progressing steadily.

Meanwhile, under the School Feeding Programme, 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.

In 2024, the Programme will continue to provide meals to enhance basic school enrollment,” he indicated.