UNDP to assist the Govt implement PSI

Accra, Aug.2, GNA - The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is to assist the Government in the efficient and effective implementation of the President's Special Initiative (PSI) under a new four-year Country programme for the period 2006 - 2010.
The programme would also focus on poverty reduction, good governance, income generation and employment activities. Mr Daouda Toure, the new UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative in Ghana, announced this when he paid a courtesy call on President John Agyekum Kufuor at the Castle, Osu on Tuesday. Mr Toure said the challenge ahead was to live up to the high standard of dignity, professional ethics and integrity that Secretary-General Busumuru Kofi Annan had set for UN agencies and organisations.
He pledged his commitment to pursue efforts to fight poverty, create wealth, human resource development and pursue good governance in a country that was emerging in the comity of nations. "It is an honour to work in Ghana, a country that had been exemplary in many aspects within the international community," he said. President Kufuor said Ghana had been working with the UNDP as a development partner for a very long time and recently in poverty reduction, multi-donor budget support, humanitarian aspects and public sector reforms.
He said the Government was working towards its vision of an emerging country within the comity of nations and called for more support from the UNDP beyond poverty reduction to achieve its objective. Prior to joining the UN in 1995, Mr Toure, a Senegalese, worked with the African Development Bank (ADB) as a Senior Country Economist at its Headquarters in Abidjan covering six African countries. He was also the Principal Economic Adviser in the North Africa Regional Office and Task Manager on policy-based lending for Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco and Egypt.