Leave Accra with minimized impediments to aid - Kufuor

Accra, Sept. 4, GNA - President John Agyekum Kufuor on the last day of the Aid Effectiveness Forum has reminded delegates to leave Accra with bold and ambitious resolutions that would minimize impediments to aid for sustained growth and development.

"...This forum is therefore to work to remove the systemic indignities of permanent aid through social and economic empowerment of recipient countries," he said to open the Ministerial meeting on Thursday.

President Kufuor also noted that the driving force of shared humanity behind such conferences showed that the concept of development partnership had attained a critical acceptance as a major vehicle to enhance aid effectiveness further in recipient countries. He said that, Ghana was an example of where development assistance had been used to stabilize the economy to move from a status of poverty on to the trajectory of sustained long term growth.

The President said development partners must feel proud of Ghana's achievements in effective aid use, which had enabled the country to graduate from an ODA status to the World Bank ranking system. "Today Ghana is able to issue bonds on the international capital market. In time, the aim is to totally wean the nation of a perennial and structural dependence on aid," he said.

Stressing on the importance of aid, President Kufuor said even in fragile states with strong and committed leadership, there were examples of remarkable progress on aid effectiveness and development. President also noted that aid should be used chiefly to assist with capacity building in recipient countries both in terms of human resource development and infrastructure to improve productivity.

"The self-confidence and 'can-do' spirit that are unleashed from such developments are what aid effectiveness must be about," the President said.

According to him, development partners must show a commitment that should be matched by efforts to increase support for critical programmes in the shared country plans.

President Kufuor said harmonization of development assistance in alignment with approved country development programme was one way of improving releases from donors and added that in Ghana the multi-donor budgetary support funds formed an integral part of expected receipts in the formal budget statement.

He said harmonization should not be tracked from whatever bi-lateral support a donor nation might agree with a recipient because of their special relations.

Mr Angel Gurria, Secretary General of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), who chaired the opening of Ministerial Meeting, said the Accra Agenda for Action (AAA) was a significant step forward that presented donors and partners with a series of new concrete measures to accelerate movement towards agreed development goals.

He said first, it must strengthen the country ownership principle in the Paris Declaration by engaging parliamentarians and citizens and making greater issues of their own systems to deliver aid as a first option and not as a last resort.

Again, he said, it must build more effective and inclusive partnership for development that would pull together all development actors into the tent as well as focus on delivering and accounting for development results and increasing medium term predictability of aid. This, he said, would enable developing countries to design effectively and manage their development programmes.