Economic policies alone did not grow Eastern Giants

Ho, May 26, GNA - A Development Planning Officer on Thursday said the celebrated leap of the Eastern giants from their former low socio-economic status to the present impressive high income countries, was not achieved only through applying the right economic policies. He said the good economic policies of those countries, such as Malaysia and Singapore were supported by a philosophy of high civic responsibility, which ensured that public officials and development agencies did what they were expected to do.

Mr Evans Kanfra, Principal Development Officer at the Volta Regional Coordinating Council (VRCC) was addressing a workshop for development officers and some representatives of NGOs in development from selected districts in southern Ghana.

The districts are Akatsi, Jasikan, Krachi East and West, Ketu, North and South Tongu, Asougyaman, Manya-Krobo and the Afram Plains. The Social Enterprise Development Foundation (SEND) sponsored the workshop, which was to sharpen skills of participants on utilizing opportunities and interventions in the Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy (GPRS II)- 2006-2009, for the improvement of the livelihoods of the poor, vulnerable and the neglected.

Mr Kanfra said an active and participatory civil society was crucial to making fine policies work, observing that civil society was still docile in Ghana at all levels of development. He stressed the need for every well-meaning citizen to have seen the GPRS to enable him or her debate issues of development at any forum. "If we design whatever policy and it remains as a document at the national and regional level, then nothing is being done," Mr Kanfra stated.

He criticized the wide abuse of credit by Ghanaians many of them go in for loans with no intension of paying back. Mr Kanfra also expressed reservations about the practice of hurriedly forming cooperative groups with the sole aim of accessing credit, observing that, as soon as the money was got and distributed the group broke up.

Mr Daniel Donya, Volta Regional Field Officer of SEND told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) that participants were expected to go back to their districts to bring district assembly staff, other local government workers and leaders of identifiable groups among others on board the crusade to ensure that poverty reduction components in the GPRS II benefited the poor. He said the districts were selected on the basis of their poverty index.