Ghana Human Development Report Launched

Accra, July 9, The Vice President, Professor John Atta Mills, stressed today that poverty reduction in rural areas and deprived urban communities is at the heart of the government's national development policy. He said it is in pursuance of this policy that about 116 billion cedis has been provided in the budget to implement the policy on access to basic services. The amount, he said, represents a real increase of about 33 per cent over last year's programmed expenditure. The Vice President said this in an address read for him by Mr. Kwame Peprah, Minister of Finance, at the launching of Ghana's first Human Development Report and the 1997 Global Human Development Report of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). ''The government is acutely aware of the need to do more to improve and expand education and raise the health status of the people,'' Professor Mills said. Prof. Mills said developing countries which have made rapid economic and social progress invested heavily in education, health, water and sanitation, adding that the government is following a similar path. The National Report, which is to be produced annually, surveys and analyses comprehensively the human development situation. The main features of the UNDP report include a new concept and measurement of poverty, including the new Human Poverty Index (HPI). This index, according to UNDP, provides a country-by-country analysis that goes beyond the conventional yardstick of income, measuring deprivation in longevity, education and economic provisioning.