Parliament adopts poverty reduction strategy report for 2010-2016
Parliament on Tuesday adopted a report of the Committee on Poverty Reduction Strategy on the Coordinated Programme of Economic and Social Development Policies for 2010-2016.
Dubbed: “An Agenda For Shared Growth and Accelerated Development for a Better Ghana”, it outlines the various policy measures the government will pursue in the stated period to transform the economy from its over-dependence on primary raw materials to a diversified prosperous 21st century industrialized middle-income country.
It also aims at enhancing international relations between the country and others both within and outside the African continent.
The report signed by Mr Imoro Yakubu, Vice Chairman of the Committee, said the main strategic direction of the government is to transform the economy into an industrial architecture, based on value-added processing of Ghana’s agricultural and natural resource endowment by the exploitation of opportunities linked to oil and gas to move the country away from dependence on traditional raw material exports.
It noted that the strategic elements to drive this policy objective included an enabling environment for accelerated employment creation, an accelerated agriculture modernization, an integrated industrial development, infrastructural expansion and modernization and human development, with a commitment to gender equity.
Key thematic areas also include; Economic Development, Social Development, Science, Technology and Innovation, Infrastructure Development, Special Development Zones and Natural Resources Management and Environment Governance.
The report said Ghana’s economic development planners aim at achieving an annual minimum average real GDP growth rate of 8.0 per cent to guarantee the attainment of per capita income of at least US$3,000 by the year 2020.
However, when the impact of oil and gas development was taken into consideration, the average real GDP was projected to grow at 11.3 per cent per annum over the medium-term, with a projected real per capita income growth of more than double within the same period.
The report also noted that the agriculture sector was expected to be the major drive of growth of the economy in the medium term, with a projected average annual growth rate of 6.5 per cent whiles the Industrial and Service sectors are also expected to grow at an average annual growth rate of 20.3 per cent and 9.4 per cent respectively.
It said although the incidence of poverty is declining as shown by the Ghana Living Standards Surveys, the inequalities between the rich and the poor continue to widen.
The report said government would adopt poverty reduction strategies targeted mainly at the three most vulnerable areas and groups identified in the poverty endemic areas in the three regions of the North and along the coastal savannah, women and the urban and rural poor.
Source: GNA