World Bank urges developing country to invest in agriculture

Accra, Aug. 20, GNA - The World Bank's World Development Report (WDR) 2008, which focuses on agriculture in 25 years, has called for greater investment in agriculture in developing countries if the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) of halving extreme poverty and hunger by 2015 would be realized.

Quoting from the report at a public lecturer organized by Institute of Democratic Governance (IDEG) in Accra, Professor Maxwell Owusu, a professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, said Ghana was ranked 35th poorest in sub-Saharan Africa. He described the report as a depreciation of all the claims about Ghana's economic gains over the years. The public lecture dubbed; "Ghana Speaks," was on the theme: "Money and Politics- The challenge of Democracy in Ghana," and was attended by politicians, economists, persons from the professional bodies and business community, academia, civil society organizations, representatives of development partners, media and communication experts. He said the report indicated that Ghanaians were sleeping on the globalized market and called for pragmatic developmental programme to move the country from a focus on agriculture to an industry based economy. Prof. Owusu said Malaysia had transformed its economy from an agricultural centre to an industrial centre. While agriculture contributes about 8.3 per cent of GDP industry contributes about 48.8 per cent and services 43.0 per cent. On the other hand, Ghana which depends heavily on agriculture with about 60 per cent, industry 25 per cent and services 15 per cent continues to import food from other countries. He said the nation also needed to focus on technological development. ".It's important to note that if we sit down without developing the needed technological infrastructure and technical know-how, the huge investors will not come."

The WDR indicates that the agricultural and rural sectors have suffered from neglect and under-investment over the past 20 years. While 75 per cent of the world's poor live in rural areas, a mere four per cent of official development assistance goes to agriculture in developing countries.

In sub-Saharan Africa, a region heavily reliant on agriculture for overall growth, the report indicates that public spending for farming is also only four per cent of total government spending and the sector is still taxed at relatively high levels. The WDR said dynamism in the rural and agricultural sectors was needed to narrow the rural-urban income gap and reduce rural poverty for 600 million poor while avoiding falling into subsidy and protection traps that will stymie growth and tax poor consumers. The report called on rich countries to reform policies which harmed the poor. For example, it was vital that the United States reduced cotton subsidies which depressed prices for African smallholders, he said.

Prof Owusu also re-examined the watershed between the Convention People's Party (CPP) and the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC), their election manifestos and the post-election behaviour of the parties against a background of the socio-economic and political legacies of British rule in Ghana.