Peer Review of Ghana is NOT ready - Dr Apraku

Accra, June 29, GNA - Dr Kofi Konadu Apraku, Minister at the Ministry of Regional Integration and NEPAD, on Wednesday said the actual peer review of Ghana would take place in the middle of August 2005.

"What happened in Abuja, Nigeria, was not the peer review of Ghana but rather the presentation of the Ghana Africa Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) by the panel of eminent persons to the APR forum."


Dr Apraku, who was making a statement in Parliament, said at the actual peer review process, "President Kufuor would sit down with his peers to discuss the country's review report."


He said the meeting would also discuss Ghana's Programme of Action (POA) in term of activities that th government would carry out to address shortcomings identified as well as how to secure funding for its implementation.


He said the APR forum directed that the publication of the final country review report and the POA should be done after August. The Minister advised that the APRM should provide grounds for national consensus and a bi-partisan approach to national development and thus should not generate the ongoing partisan "political debate and rancour".


He said the APRM was a moral contract to ensure that countries abided by the tenets of NEPAD, at the heart of which lies the entrenchment of democracy and good governance.

"For us as government, the APRM is seen as a call to entrench and institutionalise an ethos of democracy, good governance and national ownership in the body-politic."


He said: "We as a country stand to derive tremendous benefits from the goodwill of Africa and the international community due to our commitment to the APRM implementation.


"As a committed Pan-Africanist country and through the prism of our own history and experience, we have no doubt that the APRM can make a major contribution towards Africa's renaissance.


"Through it, we can turn around the poverty and marginalisation of our Continent...we see our modest and humble contribution towards the attainment of the goals of this Pan-African enterprise."