Bisi Ogunjodi, Vice President of the African Development Bank (ADB), on Sunday expressed the bank's determination to assist Ghana to reduce her level of poverty through the ADB's group assisted programmes. The "ADB will continue to work closely with the Ghana government in ensuring that poverty is reduce to the barest minimum," he said.

Mr Ogunjodi said this when he visited the Social Investment Fund (SIF) Girls Vocational Training Centre, an ADB financed projects in the Ashiedu Keteke Sub-Metropolitan area to assess the impact and effectiveness of the bank group's interventions in promoting sustainable development and in fighting poverty.

He would also hold consultations with the government on the ADB's assistance programme and operational activities. Mr Ogunjodi said for the programme to be expanded, people who were benefiting must demonstrate to those outside that they had been provided with skills that had made them self-employed.

He said ADB was proud to support the country but added, the "government needs to constantly assess the programme in order to develop strategies towards making it a sustainable.

"Government and SIF need to fine-tune the programme in order not to just provide the beneficiaries with skills but also to think of developing a marketing strategy to make them self dependent for its sustainability." Mr Yaw Osafo-Marfo, Minister of Finance who accompanied Mr Ogunjodi to the school said it was time that the SIF commercialised its programme to make it more sustainable and self-reliant.