Accra HLF Forum for September (Page 38)

Story: Lucy Adoma Yeboah & Gifty Appiah-Adjei.
THE first ever High Level Forum (HLF) on Aid Effectiveness to be held in the developing world is scheduled to take place in Accra between September 2 and 4, 2008.
Dubbed “Accra HLF-3”, the forum, which is the third of its kind, is expected to be attended by about 1,000 participants, including ministers from 100 countries, heads of bilateral and multilateral development agencies, donor organisations and civil society groups from around the world.
The first two forums were held in Rome and Paris in 2003 and 2005, respectively.
At a ceremony in Accra to brief journalists and also to launch the programme ahead of time, the Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, Mr Kwadwo Baah-Wiredu, said the objectives of the Accra HLF were to enable both donors and recipients of aid to take stock of and review progress made in implementing the Paris Declaration, identify challenges and bottlenecks and also look for the necessary actions needed to overcome those challenges.
He said it was also to identify ways to accelerate and scale up the implementation of the aid effectiveness agenda for 2011 and beyond, as well as sustain and enhance political support for doing so, particularly at the country level.
Explaining what the Paris Declaration stood for, the Finance Minister said it was endorsed in 2005 by more than 100 signatories and spelt out the international community’s consensus on the direction for reforming aid delivery and management with the view to making aid more effective and deliver better results.
He reiterated that Ghana received aid from both bilateral and multilateral sources, which were made up of project and programme, the most significant being the Multi-Donor Budget Support (MDBS) system.
Mr Baah-Wiredu observed that the implementation of the MDBS had been mutually fulfilling to both the donors and the government, since it had helped to reduce frequent individual missions and bilateral consultations, the huge cost of negotiating for aid, inconsistency in projects with government priorities, the operation of parallel systems and the unpredictability of funds.
On the benefits to be derived for hosting the forum, the minister said like other international conferences and events which had been held in Ghana, the hosting of the event signified that the world had recognised the country’s political and economic stability.
“By hosting the event on our soil, Ghana has a significant opportunity to present itself to the international community, not only as a dynamic nation that successfully pursues socio-economic reforms in a complex and globalised environment but also as a nation that has effectively managed donor assistance to the ultimate benefit of our citizens,” he observed.
In an answer to a question, the Chief Director of the ministry, Nana Juaben-Boaten Siriboe, said the three-day event would be financed through a special trust fund instituted through the World Bank, in addition to contributions from the European Union (EU), the participating entities and the government of Ghana.
Representatives from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Japan, the Netherlands, Canada and Germany attended the press briefing.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), an international organisation of 30 countries that accept the principles of representative democracy and free market economy, is co-ordinating the forum.