Japan supports Ghana's 2008 Budget with 3 million GH cedis grant

Accra, Jan. 24, GNA - Japan is to provide over three hundred million Yen (about three million GH Cedis), for the first, as grant to support Ghana's 2008 budget under the Multi-Donor Budgetary Support (MDBS) programme. Japan, until this year had provided the support to the Ghana of government under the MDBS with project-type assistance of about two billion GH cedis spanning 1973 to March 2007.

Mr Yutaka Nakamura, the Japanese Ambassador to Ghana and Mr Akwasi Osei-Adjei, Ghana's Foreign Minister on Thursday signed the grant-aid agreement for their respective countries which would go into projects and activities that were aimed at reducing poverty.

Mr Nakamura said in the past, Japan's projects had been to support indispensable socio-economic infrastructure and facilitate capacity development in the country, adding, "but now we are glad to introduce this Grant Aid for poverty Reduction Strategy, a new grant aid for budget support. "This is to complement our project-type assistance thus enhancing synergy, better harmonisation and alignment and I'm proud to announce that Ghana is one of two countries which were selected for the first year."

Mr. Nakamura added that, the move was a reflection of Japan's confidence in Ghana's self-help effort for financial and administrational reforms, poverty reduction programmes and economic development strategies. According to him, growth and poverty reduction could not be achieved without ownership and partnership and expressed the hope that Ghana would maintain an ownership of projects and programmes where the support would go to.

Giving an insight into the MDBS, Mr Osei-Adjei said the objective was to provide a more harmonised assistance to Ghana for the acceleration of the country's growth and poverty reduction strategy through the minimisation of transaction cost on the government in terms of reporting, monitoring and assessment. He said the support served multiple purposes such as the improvement of dialogue between development partners, promotion of Government's accountability for service delivery and improved development-partner coordination by reducing duplication and development gap creation.