Germany provides €39m to support MGDs

Business page 57
Story: Lucy Adoma Yeboah & Hagar Korantemaa


THE German government has provided an amount of €39 million to support Ghana in its quest to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and middle-income status by 2015.
The agreement was signed in Accra by Ghana’s Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, Mr Kwadwo Baah-Wiredu, and the German Ambassador to Ghana, Dr Marius Haas, in the company of officials from the ministry and embassy.
Out of that amount, 38 million Euros is being given out as concessional loan while one million euros, comes as grant.
At a short ceremony on Friday, Mr Baah-Wiredu said the fund was for Multi-Donor Budget Support (MDBS), district development programmes, to assist activities of out-growers and also support value-chain funding.
He said currently the main areas of the bilateral development co-operation between Ghana and Germany were on decentralisation, agriculture and sustainable economic development.
Mr Baah-Wiredu stated that the German government had been of immense help to Ghana over the years and that Germany had contributed about one billion euros for developmental programmes and projects in Ghana since 1957.
The Finance Minister pointed out that aside the the focal areas of Ghana-Germany development co-operation, which was in the area of decentralisation, agriculture and sustainable economic development, German was also supporting the Legal Sector Support Programme and the road sector and cited the rehabilitation of the Tema-Sogakope-Akatsi road.
The minister took the opportunity to appeal to German companies to establish an assembling plant in Ghana for the various German vehicles being used in Ghana, notably Mecedes Benz, BMW and VW.
He also expressed his gratitude to the outgoing Councillor for Development Co-operation at the German Embassy in Accra, Mr Jaochim Schmitt, whose tenure saw Germany’s contribution to Ghana increase from 4.5 million Euros in 2005 to 10 million Euros in 2007.
For his part, Dr Haas said the German government committed 53 million euros to Ghana in 2007 and 2008, which raised the total development co-operation support to Ghana since independence to 1,060 billion euros.
He noted that German considered itself as one of Ghana’s important development partners, and together they had built a long tradition of friendly and trustful relations.
Dr Haas said about 60 per cent of the newly committed funds were used for general budget support and the new funding arrangement on the sub-national level.
He said over the last year, Germany co-chaired the Multi-Donor Budget Support (MDBS) committee with the World Bank and under their leadership, a new framework memorandum was signed.
He pointed out that the new memorandum in the framework “brings Ghana in line with international best practices and sets out a reliable new medium-term perspective”.