HIPC yields 1.14 trillion cedis - Finance Minister

Accra, Nov. 4, GNA - The Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative has yielded about 1.14 trillion cedis since June last year. The amount was accrued from multilateral creditors such as the World Bank, African Development Bank, International Monetary Fund, European Union and the Paris Club of Creditors.

Mr Yaw Osafo-Maafo, Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, announced this in Parliament when he presented a review of the economy to the House.

He said 953.87 billion cedis of the amount had been disbursed as at the end of October.

The Minister said Sector Ministries were allocated more than 562 billion cedis of the amount while local government agencies - Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies - were given 166.13 billion cedis to carry out their programmes.

An amount of 225.4 billion cedis was also used to defray part of the domestic debt.

Some of the areas the funds were directed to included a 29.53 billion cedis approved for the Ministry of Works and Housing to enable it to carry out the construction of houses at Vodza to resettle affected people displaced by the Keta Sea Defence Project, provision of water supply systems for 20 districts in the Volta and Eastern Regions among other things.

The Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports had 113.31 allocated to it as a deposit for the upgrading of 31 senior secondary schools in selected districts in all the 10 Regions of the country to improve teaching and learning facilities in community schools.

The Ministries of Energy and Agriculture were other key beneficiaries. They were allocated HIPC funds to support their programmes of rural electrification and improvement in existing energy supply systems and growth and employment generation in the agriculture sector.