EU to grant Ghana 40 Million Euro

The European Union (EU) is to extend to Ghana a grant of 40 million Euro, about ?25 billion for budgetary support during this financial year.

Over the next four years, the EU will extend a further grant of 231 million Euro, about ?145 billion to support Ghana.

Mr Yaw Osafo Maafo, Minister of Finance, briefing newsmen during the on-going National Economic Dialogue in Accra yesterday, said these grants were extended to Ghana as a result of the initiative taken by the government to join the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC).

He said the EU has set aside one billion Euro to support all countries taking the initiative between now and year 2006.

These were the outcome of the recent annual African Caribbean Pacific (ACP) — EU meeting held in Brussels.

Mr. Osafo-Maafo said the meeting also noted that conditionalities imposed on ACP countries by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank create problems for the countries.

The meeting, he said, therefore resolved that ACP countries should themselves come out with focussed programmes and management targets which will be used as benchmarks to measure their performance.

Mr Osafo-Maafo, who chaired three separate sessions of the meeting, said it was obvious from the proceedings that ACP-EU relations are improving.

He announced that Ghana was elected to represent the ECOWAS group till the end of the year.

The Finance Minister said though eligibility for the HIPC initiative ends this year, the ACP countries negotiated for it to be extended till year 2002 so that other countries can also apply.

According to him, four African countries which applied to be part of the initiative were not accepted, because they did not meet the eligibility criteria.