The Value for Money Office Act, 2026: Financial oversight instrument or bureaucratic bottleneck? (2)

The critique of the Value for Money Office Act is not merely political.

It raises substantive legal and constitutional concerns that go to the heart of whether the institution created by the Act can fulfill its stated mandate.

The independence deficit is the most fundamental legal weakness of the Act.

In jurisdictions where value-for-money institutions have earned credibility and public trust, the enabling legislation has invariably provided clear and enforceable safeguards for independence: fixed terms for board members, protection against arbitrary removal, transparent appointment processes involving multiple arms of government or independent selection panels, and direct accountability to the legislature rather than the executive. 

The Value for Money Office Act, as currently structured, falls significantly short of these standards.

The board’s heavy reliance on executive appointment, without adequate counterbalancing mechanisms, creates a structural incentive for the Office to validate rather than scrutinise contracts sponsored by the appointing authority.

The duplication concern, while somewhat overstated by political opponents, is not without legal merit.

There is a risk of regulatory fragmentation: the co-existence of the Public Procurement Authority, the Internal Audit Agency, the Auditor-General’s Department, and the Value for Money Office creates overlapping jurisdictions that could generate confusion, conflict, and opportunities for regulated entities to exploit inter-agency gaps.

The Act does not appear to provide adequate mechanisms for inter-agency coordination or for delineating the precise boundary between the Office’s mandate and those of existing bodies.

This is a drafting lacuna that may produce litigation in due course as competing institutional authorities assert or disclaim jurisdiction over the same procurement decisions.

Perhaps the most troubling possibility raised by critics is that the Value for Money Office could become what the Minority Leader described as “the shield behind which the next generation of procurement scandals is defended and justified.” 

If the Office is used to provide political legitimacy to predetermined procurement decisions — issuing Value for Money Certificates for contracts that have already been awarded or negotiated behind closed doors — it could actually provide greater legal cover for corrupt procurement than currently exists. An overinflated contract certified by the Office will be significantly harder to challenge legally than one that merely bypassed the Public Procurement Authority.

VI.  Comparative analysis: Lessons from other Jurisdictions

A comparative examination of value-for-money oversight institutions in other jurisdictions yields important lessons for the implementation of the Ghanaian model.

In the United Kingdom, the National Audit Office (NAO) derives its credibility from a constitutional design that places it firmly within the parliamentary oversight framework rather than the executive sphere.

The Comptroller and Auditor General, who heads the NAO, is an Officer of the House of Commons, appointed by the Crown on an Address of the House of Commons, and can only be removed by an Address of both Houses.

This legislative anchoring insulates the institution from executive interference and ensures that its findings, however politically uncomfortable, carry institutional authority. Ghana’s Value for Money Office lacks any equivalent constitutional or legislative anchoring in Parliament.

In Kenya, the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority and the Office of the Auditor-General have faced similar challenges of political capture and underfunding.

The Kenyan experience demonstrates that institutional design alone is insufficient — adequate budgetary allocation, professional civil service protections for staff, and a culture of institutional independence must accompany the formal legal framework.

Ghana would do well to heed these lessons in the implementation phase of the Act.

Rwanda’s Office of the Auditor General, by contrast, has been cited as a model of effectiveness in the East African context, owing in part to strong political commitment at the highest level to acting on audit findings and to the progressive depoliticisation of the appointment process.

Whether Ghana can replicate these conditions is a political question that transcends the legal architecture of the Value for Money Office Act alone.

VII.  Legal assessment and Recommendations

Having examined the Act’s mandate, the existing framework, the arguments on both sides, and comparative experience, the following legal assessment and recommendations are offered.

1.  The Act addresses a real gap. The author accepts that the Public Procurement Authority’s procedural mandate does not adequately address cost efficiency and post-contract verification. The concept of a specialist value-for-money body with technical expertise in benchmarking is, in principle, a sound institutional response to Ghana’s persistent contract inflation problem. The objection to the Act should not be to its concept but to its design.

2.  The independence provisions must be strengthened. If the Value for Money Office is to command institutional credibility, Parliament — or the executive through subsidiary legislation — must introduce robust independence safeguards: transparent multi-stakeholder appointment processes, fixed non-renewable terms for board members, clear grounds and procedures for removal that preclude arbitrary dismissal, and direct reporting obligations to the relevant parliamentary committee. Without these features, the Office will perpetually struggle to establish and maintain public trust.

3.  Inter-agency coordination mechanisms must be legislated. To address the duplication risk, clear statutory demarcations between the Value for Money Office, the Public Procurement Authority, the Internal Audit Agency, and the Auditor-General’s Department should be developed and enacted, whether through amendment of the principal Act or through comprehensive regulations. A statutory duty of cooperation and information-sharing between these bodies would also enhance systemic effectiveness.

4.  Adequate resourcing is non-negotiable. The institutional lesson from across the continent is that oversight bodies created without adequate budgetary independence quickly become captives of the executive. The Act should be supported by a dedicated and protected funding mechanism, insulated from arbitrary executive reduction, to ensure that the Office can attract and retain the technical expertise its mandate demands.

5.  Civil society and parliamentary oversight must be activated. The effectiveness of the Value for Money Office will ultimately depend not only on its formal legal structure but on the quality of external oversight brought to bear on it. Parliament’s Finance Committee, civil society organisations, the media, and the legal profession all have roles to play in monitoring the Office’s operations, scrutinising its certification decisions, and holding it publicly accountable for its performance.

VIII.  Conclusion

The Value for Money Office Act, 2026 is neither a panacea nor — as its harshest critics contend — a mere political instrument dressed in the language of accountability.

It is an imperfect but not unreasonable legislative response to a genuine and longstanding problem in Ghana’s public financial management.

Its imperfections, however, are serious.

The independence deficit in its governance architecture is not a minor technical flaw; it is a fundamental design weakness that could determine whether the Office fulfills its mandate or becomes yet another captured institution in a landscape already crowded with underpowered oversight bodies.

Ghana does not need more laws that look good on paper.

It needs institutions that work — institutions with the structural independence, the technical capacity, and the political protection to call out overpriced contracts and inefficient public spending regardless of which administration commissioned them. 

The Value for Money Office Act creates the scaffolding for such an institution.

Whether that institution actually materialises will depend on decisions that lie beyond the Act itself: decisions about appointments, funding, political culture, and the willingness of successive governments to live with an oversight body that may occasionally be inconvenient.

The citizens of Ghana, whose taxes fund the contracts the Office is meant to scrutinise, deserve both the institution and the independence.

The legislature and the executive now bear the responsibility of ensuring that the Value for Money Office Act delivers not merely the form, but the substance, of genuine financial oversight.
 
The writer is a legal practitioner and the Principal Counsel at Versus Legal & Advocacy PRUC, a law firm based in Abelemkpe, Accra.