Ghana Receives 860m From Germany

The Deputy Minister of Finance, Dr. Gheysika Agambila has revealed that since Ghana’s cooperation started with Germany in 1957 up till date, the country has received about Euros 860 million in terms of financial and technical assistance from the Federal Republic of Germany.

This was disclosed at a 2-day Inter-governmental Consultations meeting between Ghana and the Federal Representatives of Germany held in Accra.

Dr. Agamabila said the Ghanaian economy over the past 10 years has been confronted with several challenges, and these included higher expected payments of wages and salaries, a substantial fall in programmed foreign inflows as well as external shocks resulting from higher world prices of crude oil.

Despite these challenges, Dr. Agambila maintained that the government has been able to stabilise the macro economic last year, albeit at a great political cost. He said the over all total domestic cost expenditure were only slightly above target (0.6 percent of GDP) while domestic revenue has been quite robust exceeding the programmed target by 1.3% of GDP.

Inflation, the minister noted has remained on a downward trend declining from 21.0 percent at the end of 2001 to 12.9 percent in September this year as compared to end year target of 13 percent with interest rates following the downward trend.

Under the HIPC initiative adopted by the government, the deputy minister said so far $50.64 million has been cancelled by multilateral donors namely IDA, AFDB, ADF and IMF. Adding that as at October this year, the HIPC main account has been credited with an exceeding ?400.0 billion for immediate disbursement to District Assemblies and various MDAs for poverty reduction activities.

On their part, the leader of the German delegation, Dr. Andreas Pfeli said German seeks to shape global rules that enable developing countries to fight poverty, an example being the HIPC initiative, initiated under German leadership in Cologne, June 1999.

He said the adoption of the HIPC initiative together with a sound democratic system amply demonstrated during the last democratic elections and in the transition from the old to the new government; through their contribution with other development partners, Germany would like to contribute its share towards that goal.