Government rallies development partners
Accra (Greater Accra) 12 May 2003- The Board of Directors of the African Development Bank (ADB) has approved a grant of 500,000 dollars for The Gambia to finance its emergency assistance programme for drought victims.
The grant would be used to alleviate the suffering of the most affected people especially those living in the rural areas and who are facing food shortages caused by a prolonged drought situation in the country since 2002.
The assistance aims to facilitate the revival of food production and reduce the hardship faced by about 235,000 people as a result of the drought in 10 out of the country's 35 districts.
A statement made available to the Ghana News Agency from the Bank's temporary base in Tunis, said the grant would specifically make funds available to purchase and supply seeds for the next cropping season, which starts in June, as well as the construction and re-deepening of wells to provide sufficient drinking water.
In all, about 1.6 million tonnes of assorted seeds would be given to affected communities in order to bring food production up to the 2001 levels. A total number of 52 wells would be re-deepened. In addition, 30 new ones would be dug in order to provide fresh water for human and animal consumption.
The ADB contribution would be used to complement government and other donor efforts to provide urgent humanitarian assistance to communities grappling with the destructive effects of the drought.
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Kumasi (Ashanti Region) 12 May 2003- The Department of National Lotteries (DNL) has started a programme to decentralise its operations as part of measures to improve upon its performance and increase revenue.
As part of the programme the DNL will establish offices at the regional and district capitals from where lotto receivers could take delivery of their lotto coupons and books instead of travelling to Accra.
Kojo Andah, Director of the DNL, said this at a get-together held on Sunday by the Kumasi Lotto Receivers Welfare Club as part of activities marking the club's 20th anniversary. He said the decentralisation programme began in April and that the department had already located offices in the regional and district capitals.
''The programme will immediately be followed by automation of our lotto system.'' Andah said the DNL would soon institute a scheme to award honest and hardworking lotto receivers with trips to countries including the USA, South Africa and Australia.
On concerns raised by the lotto receivers regarding the problems posed to the DNL by 'Banker-to-Banker' operators, Andah explained that enacting a law to prohibit operations of the operators alone could not eliminate them entirely from business.
He said any such law ought to be measures backed by DNL and lotto receivers "to enable us to push them out of business". Gabriel Boateng, secretary of the Kumasi Lotto Receivers Welfare Club, said the main objective of the Club was to expose the bad nuts among them.
Osei Asibey Mensah, Chairman of the Club, assured the DNL that notwithstanding the constraints, lotto receivers were poised to co-operate and work much harder to help the Lotteries generate more revenue.
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Accra (Greater Accra) 12 May 2003- Government said on Monday it needed the support of all its partners to achieve a real GDP growth rate of at least 4.7 per cent from last year's 4.5 per cent.
This is also necessary to achieve an inflation figure of below 10 per cent by end of 2004 from the 15.2 per cent posted at the end of last year. "We need the support of both bilateral and multilateral development partners to achieve these targets," Yaw Osafo-Maafo, Minister of Finance and Economic Planning said in a speech read for him in Accra.
He was speaking at the start of bilateral negotiations between the government of Ghana and the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development. Osafo-Maafo said overall government budget deficit was also expected to be equivalent to 3.6 per cent of GDP with domestic primary budget surplus of 3.0 per cent of GDP.
The rebuilding of gross official reserves holdings would be equivalent to 2.3 months of imports of goods and services. The two-day negotiations would assess on-going German assisted programmes and projects throughout the country and adjustments made if necessary to achieve the intended objectives.
Financial commitments would also be made during the negotiations for ongoing and new programmes and projects including the multi-donor budget supporting programme. Osafo-Maafo said Ghana was committed to a systematic reduction of poverty through the implementation of the Ghana Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy, which had the "ultimate goal of achieving broad-based and sustainable equitable growth, accelerated poverty reduction and protection of the vulnerable and excluded".
He put expenditure for basic services, and income generation activities for the poor in 2002 at 2.7 billion cedis. "About 75 per cent of that allocation was spent on basic human development services including primary health care, basic education, and the provision of safe drinking water."
The talks would also touch on agriculture and food security, economic reforms and market economy as well as democracy, civil society and public administration. Mrs Gudrun Grosse-Wisemann, Director, Africa and the Middle East of the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development, who led the German delegation, said poverty reduction was the overarching goal of German Development Cooperation as laid out in the Action Programme of 2015 adopted by the German government two years ago.
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