Ghana has put aid to good use - Minister (page 15)

Saturday, September 6, 2008
THE Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, Mr Kwadwo Baah-Wiredu, has stated that Ghana has put aid to good use in the last few years, and that has reflected in infrastructure developments and social services.
He said debt relief resources that the country received after adopting the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had been used productively to construct and upgrade urban, rural and trunk roads such as the Asankragua-Enchi road, the Sogakofe-Aflao road currently under construction, the Tetteh Quarshie-Madina road in Accra, with other resources going into health and education sectors of the economy.
The finance minister told the Daily Graphic after a press conference to close the Third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Accra yesterday that aid could be a catalyst to unlock the country’s potential to develop and not as an end in itself.
However, he said releasing aid in volumes and on schedule, as well as using system in the country to execute aid projects would go a long way to quicken the country’s pace at development.
He said the country was doing well domestically to cut down on aid dependence and that currently, 80 per cent of all budget resources was raised locally, with donors providing 20 per cent.
Speaking at the press conference which brought to the table all representatives of all partners in the forum, Mr Baah-Wiredu urged developing nations not to look into the air and wait for aid, but must take their destinies into their own hands and do something to help their people out of poverty.
The Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the World Bank and the Government of Ghana, anchored on the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, organised the three-day High Level Forum, which ended on Thursday.
"This forum has advanced the cause of our discussions over the last three-and-a-half years. But we can only see aid as a catalyst in helping us to use innovation and do things for ourselves," Mr Baah-Wiredu stated.
The Managing Director of the World Bank, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, urged donors and developing countries not to be complacent about the progress in talks, but must work faster to ensure that the promises were fulfilled.
"We must not be complacent about what has been achieved. Now, the Accra Agenda for Action should lead to a faster movement," Dr Okonjo-Iweala, who is also a former Nigerian Finance Minister, stated.
She added that the current global crisis should not be an excuse for donors to fail to deliver aid, but it should rather be the chief reason to hasten the pace, should the economic gains made by developing countries not reversed.
"When we co-ordinate aid more effectively, it becomes a better catalyst to augment resources of the recipient country."
The managing director of the World Bank said agreements reached at the forum meant that donor nations should now allow developing countries to lead in making decisions as to where they want aid for, in what quantities and how it should be delivered.
Dr Okonjo-Iweala said the Accra HLF had given the parties the opportunity to develop new instruments to make aid more effective, saying the World Bank, for instance, would continue to reform and simplify its systems in the next three years, saying "from now, we will be talking action not words."
The Secretary-General of Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Mr Angel Gurria, lauded the Accra Agenda for Action (AAA), particularly on ownership, predictability and untying of aid and cautioned developed countries not to allow short-term difficulties such as the global recession to prevent them from living up to expectation.
"Aid predictability is essential to allow developing countries to plan three-five years in their development process," the outspoken secretary-general said.
He said the OECD-DAC donors would not only scale up aid to countries that had shown resilience, but they would also untie the resources. This means that recipient countries can receive the resources and decide from where to source their supplies and not necessarily from the donor countries as has been the case all these years.
In the context that aid effectiveness is a catalyst and not a requirement for the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the President of the African Development Bank (AfDB), Dr Donald Kaberuka, said, among the things, African countries should do well to direct aid to growth areas such as the private sector development to create jobs, as well as educate their citizens.
"The AAA means that the volume of aid available should be utilised effectively to produce results to bolster their economies," he said.
Ghana had a classic example of finding a good use for its growing remittances from its nationals abroad to further propel its economic growth and development, Dr Kaberuka said, adding that African countries also needed to save in this era of commodity boom.
However, civil society organisations which thronged the forum in their numbers had little faith in the agreement, describing the AAA as "more words than action".
The Civil Society Voices for Better Aid, a coalition of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), nevertheless welcomes progress on allowing civil society a greater say in the discussions, and that donor countries’ assurances to ensure transparency and mutual accountability would enable them to monitor and measure results.