EDF spends 50. 1 million Euros on projects

Tamale, Jan. 21, GNA - The European Development Fund (EDF) has spent 50.1 million Euros in the execution of 3,743 micro-projects in the country since 1990.

The first micro-projects programme, which was on a pilot basis from 1990 to 1991, was funded at a cost of 1.83 million Euros, made up of 1.10 million Euros of EDF assistance and 0.73 million Euros of local counterpart funding covering 62 pilot schemes. Alhaji Mustapha Ali Idris, Northern Regional Minister, said this when he commissioned the 6th Micro-Projects Programme, which would cover 18 districts in the Northern Region for the Northern Zone in Tamale on Friday.

Alhaji Idris said Ghana's socio-economic development landscape was typified by low access to basic resources like education, health, water and sanitation, which had created a strong demand for the micro-project support.

He said the results of the previous micro-project programme and the lessons learnt had shown a strong relevance of the programme in complementing government's effort at poverty reduction and decentralisation.

He said one of the core challenges in Ghana's decentralisation process was financing of local government systems and that currently, decentralised functions and responsibilities had not yet been fully met by the accompanying transfers of financial resources. "This has led to a situation where implementation of District Development Plans are sometimes partial and unsystematically carried out while there is a plethora of donors providing significant financial, technical and semi-capital support to the decentralised process", he said.

Mr. Kwabena Darfoor, Programme Manager of the Micro-Projects Management Unit (MPMU), said the programme would reinforce the Ghana Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy (GPRS11) by augmenting physical, financial and technical resources available for enhancing basic social and infrastructure and services. He said under the programme, poor and deprived communities in 79 districts located in the six poorest regions, namely, the Upper East, Upper West, Northern, Volta, Central and Eastern, would benefit.