Vepp urges development partners to align procedures

Story: Boahene Asamoah

THE Vice-President, Alhaji Alui Mahama, has called on the country’s development partners to re-organise their support to the country to ensure the proper alignment and the harmonisation of procedures.
That he said would also help strengthen the public financial management systems.
Delivering the keynote address at the annual Ghana Consultative Group/Partnership Meeting in Accra yesterday, Alhaji Mahama said “we are all witnesses to how instrumental aid delivery can be to the development of a nation when it is delivered on the principles of ownership alignment while using country systems”.
He again called on the international community to take up the challenge of addressing the difficult but necessary policy and procedural reforms required to maximise the development impact of aid.
Speaking on the topic Ghana’s Aid Policy- A joint Approach to Accelerated Development”, the Vice-President at the meeting offered to take account of the national development process and reminded the country of where it had come from and where it was headed.
He said “the government had achieved some impressive results in our development agenda for the various sector”.
Alhaji Mahama stated that the economy had been under severe pressure due to the escalating crude oil and food prices, as well as wage agreements necessary for the stable governance of the country.
“It has remained fairly resilient due to the strong macroeconomic fundamentals sustained in 2001”, the Veep stated.
He said it was as a result of the global crises that the government announced mitigation measures to lessen what the Vice-President described as “harsh global crisis”.
“It is estimated that the government will loose about GH¢92.47 million in revenue as a result of the mitigating measures on food and oil”, adding that the government would subsidise the cost of fertiliser to farmers and increase subsidies on energy.
He said the Ministry of Food and Agriculture had been directed to hasten the supply of tractors at subsidy rates and to also fast track the creation of small irrigation dams and improved seedlings to farmers.
The Vice-President urged the discussants to deliberate on the type of aid architecture the country had with its partners and the response needed to move the economy to a middle income status by 2015.
On the oil find, the vice president said the government would work with the various oil and gas sub-committees to evolve a policy and strategic position on how to utilise the resources to harness the transformation of the economy prudently with a positive impact on the national development agenda.
THE Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, Mr Kwadwo Baah-Wiredu, has said that the pressure from the global crises could potentially wipe away the country’s macro-economic gains.
He said Ghana’s crude oil import bill had risen from $500 million in 2005 to $2.1 billion at the end of 2007 and is currently moving to $2.5 billion for the same quantity of oil imports.
Ghana imports about 60,000m barrels of oil annually to the country.
He said the government had used price and tariff adjustments, restructuring of normal government business and tightened its fiscal stance to address the problems and was currently implementing new measures to ensure that these measures were sustained and mentioned some of the measures as the adjustments in electricity special load tariffs.
“In additionally the increase in tariffs for the high voltage users, the use of the hydro component for generation will be increased, while the emergency power plants will be shut down”, Mr Baah-Wiredu stated.