Mahama urges OECD to support developing countries

President John Dramani Mahama on Tuesday appealed to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to develop a blueprint for the development of lower middle income countries and other developing countries.

This, he said, would give them the leverage to generate funding and other resources to develop their economies and others in the sub region.

President Mahama made this call when he delivered an acceptance speech at the headquarters of OECD in Paris after formally signing onto the OECD as the ninth country in Africa and the 50th in the world.

President Mahama said Ghana would benefit from the organization as there were specific experiences to share and learn from the older members and gave the assurance that his administration would adhere to the tenets of the organization.

He pledged to step up intra-African trade with neighbouring countries as a way of generating income and facilitating trade links among all the countries in the sub-region and beyond.

The President said in order to expand infrastructural development in the country, government had engaged the International Monetary Fund and other funding agencies hinting that government would continue to collaborate with other agencies to achieve her desired development goals.

President Mahama said government would also carry out structural reforms in the areas of Agriculture, health, employment and social protection to ensure that Ghanaians attained the desired socio-economic comfort.

On skills development, President Mahama said government would make an adjustment in training more technical and vocational personnel to take up responsibilities in the development agenda of Ghana.

This he said would form part of the reforms government would be carrying out in the coming years.

Mr Rintaro Tamaki, Deputy Secretary General of OECD gave the assurance that his outfit would mobilize necessary resources to support Ghana to harness her potential especially in deepening democratic dispensation.

He commended President Mahama for signing onto the OECD adding that they would provide capacity building and all other logistics that the West African country would be needing to step up infrastructural development.

The OECD, which is the arrow programme that has attracted President Mahama to France is an international economic organisation of 34 countries, founded in 1961 to stimulate economic progress and world trade.

It is a forum of countries describing themselves as committed to democracy and the market economy, providing a platform to compare policy experiences, seeking answers to common problems, identify good practices and coordinate domestic and international policies of its members.

In 1948, the OECD originated as the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC), led by Robert Marjolin of France, to help administer the Marshall Plan (which was rejected by the Soviet Union and its satellite states.

This would be achieved by allocating American financial aid and implementing economic programmes for the reconstruction of Europe after World War II, where there had been similar efforts in the Economic Cooperation Act of 1948 of the United States of America, which stipulated the Marshall Plan that had also taken place elsewhere in the world to war-torn Republic of China and post-war Korea,but the American recovery program in Europe was the most successful one.

In 1961, the OEEC was reformed into the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development by the Convention on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and membership was extended to non-European states. Most OECD members are high-income economies with a very high Human Development Index (HDI) and are regarded as developed countries.

The OECD's headquarters are at the Château de la Muette in Paris, France and Ghana after joining the country would become the 35th member.