He said, “Fighting against corruption is a sure way of increasing a Country’s Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA) score or ranking”.

Mr Zeufack gave the advice at the launch of the 2018 CPIA, which ranked Ghana among the top ten countries, who scored above 3.0 in the Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) for performance based in 2017.

He said Ghana had an average CPIA score of 3.6 in the country-level against an SSA International Development Association average rate of 3.2 with Rwanda having the highest score of 4.0.

The analysis of the CPIA covered 38 countries including Rwanda, Senegal, Kenya, Cabo Verde, Burkina Faso, Uganda and Benin which described the progress the countries are making on improving the quality of their policies and institutions.

The CPIA is a tool used in measuring the extent to which countries support sustainable growth and poverty reduction and consequently, the effective use of development assistance.

It consist of 16 criteria grouped in four equally weighted clusters including Economic Management, Structural Policies, Policies for Social Inclusion and Equity as well as Public Sector Management and Institutions.

Mr Zeufack urged African leaders to pay more attention to this important tool of measurement and use it accordingly adding that “The CPIA is important for African countries, not only because a better score leads to an increase in concessional financing from the World Bank, but also because it is an excellent tool for policy formulation and monitoring”.

He said the average quality of policies and institutions in the SSA was broadly unchanged in 2017 and this was a shift from the deterioration observe in the previous year. 

He said in 2017, the regional CPIA score was 3.1 and this average CPIA score for SSA remained slightly below the average of 3.2 for other International Development Association.

Ghana attained her highest performing score of 3.8 in the policies for social inclusion and equity and with a lowest performing score of 3.3 in economic management cluster.

Madam Punam Chuhan-Pole, the Lead Economist and Lead Author of the report said, “In 2017, African countries had more favourable global environment that provided them with space to implement reforms”.

She said that according to the analysis, nearly 30 per cent more countries strengthened their policy and institutional quality in the 2017 compared to 2016, adding that it was an encouraging trend”.

She said favourable global economic conditions supported a turnaround in economic activity in SSA in 2017, easing pressure on weak policy frameworks.