Takoradi, Nov 7, GNA - Mrs Nancy Zah, the Deputy Western Regional Coordinating Director, has said corruption should be eliminated to enable the country to make headway in development.

Opening a two-day workshop on the 2005 Annual Progress Report (APR) on the Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy (GPRS) One and GPRS Two in Takoradi, she said the prevalence of corruption in the country was affecting development programmes.

Fifty heads of departments and representatives of non-governmental organisations from the Western and Central regions attended the workshop organised by the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC).

Mrs Zah said bribery and corruption worked against poverty reduction because money meant for poverty alleviation were diverted making the poor and the disadvantaged to suffer.

She said the fight against corruption should go hand in hand with poverty reduction strategies to enable the people enjoy decent standard of living.

Mrs Zah said poverty should be eliminated or at least minimised before the GPRS is completed.

Mrs Alice Amekudzi, a senior planning analyst at the NDPC, said the commission has developed a GPRS communication strategy to coordinate information dissemination and its related documents, promote continual dialogue on its implementation and generate feed back for policy management process.

She said the communication strategy was in furtherance of the objective of the NDPC for inclusive development planning and management in the country.

Mr Michael Danquah, planning analyst of NDPC, said according to the APR, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate of 5.8 per cent attained in 2004 was principally due to the good performance by the agriculture sector that grew at 7.5 per cent.

He said the agriculture sector growth rate fell to 6.5 per cent in 2005 as a result of the reduction in cocoa production from 29.9 per cent in 2004 to 13.2 per cent in 2005.

Mr Danquah said the GDP growth rate of 5.8 per cent attained in 2005 may be explained by the improvement in the performance of the food crops sub-sector which recorded a growth rate of 6 per cent compared to 5.4 per cent in 2004.

Mr Danquah said female enrolment targets for 2004/2005 were not met in the Northern Region, but were exceeded in the Upper East and Upper West regions.

He said although there were positive and slow improvements in female enrolment at the national level and in deprived regions, the rate of enrolment was not high enough for the attainment of the Millennium Development Goal of Gender Parity in education in 2005. Mr Danquah said the availability of adequate classrooms in good condition is a key factor in promoting additional enrolment and retention of pupils in schools. He said the 2005 Education Sector Performance Report indicates that 30.3 per cent of the stock of the current total number of 59,210 public primary classrooms needed to be rehabilitated. 7 Nov 06