HIPC Initiative is not enough - Nduom

The Minister for Economic Planning and Regional Integration, Dr. Paa Kwesi Nduom says there is the need for development partners to provide greater and much more encompassing debt relief for the poor countries.

Opening a meeting on Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) at the KAMA Conference Centre in Accra on Wednesday, Dr. Nduom said African Finance Ministers who met in Johannesburg agreed that the highly indebted poor countries initiative (HIPC) does not go far enough.

"Debt relief without the shame of being declared HIPC, a tag nobody likes and is very demoralizing, is what is needed. We want out development partners to help us but they should not shame us in the process because it doesn't help the national morale."

He said the MDG must be points for monitoring and evaluating and also challenge implementers of the plan to work at meeting the goals.

He promised that government would make a poverty reduction strategy paper available in March every year for incorporation in the annual budget.

The meeting attended by representatives from all the UN agencies in Ghana, donor agencies, and NGOs called for rational reform in budgeting to ensure that the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are achieved. It urged government not to see the MDGs as a tool for seeking extra budgetary funding, but a means to redefine development goals and make them more measurable.

The eight-point Millennium Development Goals aim at halving extreme poverty and hunger by 2015, achieving universal primary education by 2005, empowering women and promote equality between women and men and reduce under-five mortality by two-thirds.

The rest is to achieve maternal mortality by three-quarters, reverse the spread of diseases, especially HIV/AIDS and malaria, ensure environmental sustainability and create global partnership for development with targets for aid, trade and debt relief.

The main premise of the millennium commitments is to move development from the global to the local level, create the necessary links between global target setting and national priority setting.

It is also to re-energise a broad political constituency to accelerate progress towards the goals and generate public awareness, scholarship and debate for action around the development challenges of the times.

Professor Bartholomew Armah, a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs, said work on the MDG would assist government revise and set long-term targets for development.

He called for a supportive environment for the goals and urged the donor community to make funds available on time and in the right amounts to carry out setout development goals.