World Bank increases its assistance to Ghana

Tamale, October 23, GNA - The World Bank would increase its financial support to Ghana by 50 per cent starting from next year, Mr Mats Karlsson, Country Director of the Bank has announced in Tamale. He said the increase would last for two years and urged the government to put the money into good use to improve the living standards of the people especially those in deprived regions.

Mr Karlsson announced this during a courtesy call on the Northern Region Minister, Mr Ernest Debrah at his office on Wednesday. He advised the government to put the micro financing system working, reduce inflation and interest rates to encourage people to borrow from the banks and help commercialise their produce.

The Country Director was in the region to attend a three-day "Dialogue Development forum", organised by the Institute for Policy Alternatives, a Tamale-based think-tank, in collaboration with the World Bank and a host of development partners to promote consultation on issues of public policy.

The Forum beginning from Monday would focus on- "the Poverty Reduction Strategy: Challenges and opportunities for strengthening partnerships between Government, Civil Society and Donors".

The Development partners co-sponsoring the Development Dialogue are the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA), Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) the German Technical Assistance Agency (GTZ) Centre for Policy Analysis (CEPA) and the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD).

Mr Karlsson urged the government to tackle the issue of land administration to bring sanity into that sector to attract investors. On subsidy, he admitted that the lack of it was undermining agricultural growth in the country and adding that, "it is your choice to subsidize your agriculture".

He appealed to West African States to encourage the establishment of a common market to allow comparative competition of agricultural goods in the sub-region.

Mr Debrah noted that agriculture is the main source of finance for the country and needed to be subsidised, saying, "If we fail in this direction we will have a problem".

He noted that the demand by the advance countries on the developing countries to reduce inflation and interest rates have always been a difficult issue because most developing economies were still not resilient to withstand external economic shocks.

Mr Debrah earlier received the Danish Ambassador, Mr Flemming Bjork Pedersen and said that the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy was focused to address problems of infrastructure, health, water, sanitation and electricity to open up rural communities for the people to undertake small- scale businesses.

He said the government has identified the private sector as the engine of growth and urged donor countries to support the orderly development of the sector.

The Minister explained that the problems with people in the region have been that they have not seen agriculture as an economic venture even though the region abounds in land, natural and human resources. He noted that the region was a deprived one and needed more support from the government and donor partners to make life meaningful for the people.

Mr Debrah however cautioned that: "if we do not start to learn to do things for ourselves now, a time will come when there will be fatigue on donor partners to stop their support to us".

On HIV/AIDS, the Minister told, Mr. Pedersen that personnel of the Ministry of Health in collaboration with civil organizations have embarked on intensive educational campaigns on the disease in the rural communities.

He said even though the region recorded the least number of HIV/AIDS cases in the country much work was still going on to stem the spread of the disease in the area.

Mr Pedersen said the East Mamprusi, West Mamprusi and the Savelegu/Nanton Districts would receive DANIDA's support for the next two years.