Accra, April 16, GNA - The Ghana, will in March next year conduct a population and housing census to determine her population to inform development decision making.

The exercise, estimated to cost about 48.9 million dollars, would provide demographic and socio-economic data on all the districts to enhance planning at all levels.

It is also expected to provide basic data for indicators on education, national income and health, among others, to enable policy makers to efficiently design appropriate remedies for each sector. Speaking at a meeting with Ghana's development partners in Accra on Thursday to solicit support for the exercise, Mr Fiifi Fiavi Kwetey, Deputy Minister in-charge of Economic Planning at the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, said the availability of quality statistical data

was a prerequisite for development planning for quality growth. Mr Kwetey said it was with this conviction that the government was committed to ensuring that all logistics needed for the 2010 exercise would be made available for the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) to conduct the exercise successfully.

He said government would bear half of the cost of the census to send signals that it was serious about the exercise and appealed to her development partners to support and commit funds towards it. Dr Grace Bediako, Government Statistician, said improved technology

and software would be used for the exercise to ensure that the results were accurate. Dr Bediako said the GSS would engage 45,000 field personnel to help

it to conduct the exercise. The country's development partners at the meeting pledged their support for the exercise.