Government rallies development partners

Government said on Monday it needed the support of all its partners to achieve a real GDP growth rate of at least 4.7 per cent from last year's 4.5 per cent.

This is also necessary to achieve an inflation figure of below 10 per cent by end of 2004 from the 15.2 per cent posted at the end of last year.

"We need the support of both bilateral and multilateral development partners to achieve these targets," Mr Yaw Osafo-Maafo, Minister of Finance and Economic Planning said in a speech read for him in Accra.

He was speaking at the start of bilateral negotiations between the government of Ghana and the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development.

Mr Osafo-Maafo said overall government budget deficit was also expected to be equivalent to 3.6 per cent of GDP with domestic primary budget surplus of 3.0 per cent of GDP.

The rebuilding of gross official reserves holdings would be equivalent to 2.3 months of imports of goods and services.

The two-day negotiations would assess on-going German assisted programmes and projects throughout the country and adjustments made if necessary to achieve the intended objectives.

Financial commitments would also be made during the negotiations for ongoing and new programmes and projects including the multi-donor budget supportn programme.

Mr Osafo-Maafo said Ghana was committed to a systematic reduction of poverty through the implementation of the Ghana Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy, which had the "ultimate goal of achieving broad-based and sustainable equitable growth, accelerated poverty reduction and protection of the vulnerable and excluded".

He put expenditure for basic services, and income generation activities for the poor in 2002 at 2.7 billion cedis.

"About 75 per cent of that allocation was spent on basic human development services including primary health care, basic education, and the provision of safe drinking water."

The talks would also touch on agriculture and food security, economic reforms and market economy as well as democracy, civil society and public administration.

Mrs Gudrun Grosse-Wisemann, Director, Africa and the Middle East of the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development, who led the German delegation, said poverty reduction was the overarching goal of German Development Cooperation as laid out in the Action Programme of 2015 adopted by the German government two years ago.