GRi Business, Economics & Finance 29 –
04 - 2003
A statement issued in
GRi.../
Send your comments to viewpoint@ghanareview.com
A Review by the two Bretton Woods institutions made available to the Ghana News
Agency (GNA) Business Desk was very critical of the first completed PRSPs, noting that none of them included contingencies in
the event of financing shortfalls.
Even though the Review did not
state the countries involved, it noted that this would arise out of the pain of
declining aid and unfavourable trade terms that have eroded the earning power of
many African exports.
"The presentation of a set
of priority actions that are not yet fully financed and without contingency
plans is a risk to the achievement of poverty reduction objectives," the
Study stressed.
Significantly, many PRSPs according to the Review did not containexplicit
pro-poor growth strategies. It observed that the amount of debt payments to be
saved under the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative would be
smaller than predicted, hampering spending on poverty alleviation measures and
programmes.
Indeed, the level of the savings
were determined on the basis of uncertain projections about economic growth and
export earnings, especially since world prices have been falling for primary
commodities, which accounted for the bulk of Sub-Sahara Africa's exports.
The World Bank noted that even
though PRSPs depended on money saved from repayments,
"they also draw heavily from the general government budget. And financing
problems were exacerbated when these budgets are highly dependent on external
sources of funding.
"When this happens and as
usually donor financing are often not sustained, governments are forced to
constantly revise their PRSP targets." In
The Bank and the IMF say they
expected that the conditions of the poor would be improved through increased
government spending in sectors such as education, health and rural
infrastructure. They said average spending on poverty reduction was estimated
to increase from 7.7 per cent of GDP to 10.2 per cent between 1999 and 2002 in
a sample of seven countries that completed their PRSPs.
"Another aspect missing in
many PRSPs is the need for strategies to deal with
the growing social and economic threat posed by HIV/AIDS, saying that in at
least 10 low-income countries, one-third of all adults carry the HIV virus and
sadly, early PRSPs were not fully successful in
capturing the seriousness of the threat or the link between poverty and
AIDS."
GRi.../
Send your comments to viewpoint@ghanareview.com
The Ghana Stock Exchange
All-Share Index, the key measure of the Accra Bourse, moved up by 11.39 points
to end the day at 1,750.38 points from Friday's close of at 1,738.99 points.
Traded volumes slumped to 48,300
shares from Friday's close of 403,700 shares. There were three price changes -
all positive. Guinness Ghana Limited rose by 176 cedis at 1,400 cedis; SSB Bank
was 100 cedis richer at 6,721 cedis and Unilever Ghana Limited gained two cedis
at 6,462 cedis. Market capitalisation was up at 7,764.48 billion cedis from
7,736.80 billion cedis. Change for the year was 25.45 per cent.
The following are the last
prices of listed equities in cedis:
ABL 426
AGC 28,500
ALW 4,000
BAT 1,400
CFAO 72
CPC 630
EIC 5,005
FML 2,201
GBL 531
GCB 5,400
GGL 1,400 +174
HFC 1,230
MGL 258
MLC 312
MOGL 19,761
PAF 750
PBC 390
PZ 2,040
SCB 34,001
SPPC 390
SSB 6,721 +100
SWL 285
TBL 5,012 +2
UNIL 6,450
CMLT 460
GRi.../
Send your comments to viewpoint@ghanareview.com