The government is reviewing the Vision 2020 document, written by the past government as the blueprint for socio-economic development, to achieve the aims that have been elusive over the years.

Mr Kwadwo Baah Wiredu, Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, on Wednesday said the revised document is putting emphasis on the reduction of poverty, bringing about equity, including gender equity issues, and promoting rights based on the development approach.

This was contained in a speech read for him in at the opening of the 31st annual general meeting of the Ghana Institute of Planners (GIP) in Accra.

The meeting, which is a workshop and seminar, is on the theme "The changing face of planning in the 21st century."

Mr Wiredu said planning has to change from its traditional base to one that incorporates all aspects of development in the social and economic spheres of people's lives.

"People's participation is considered critical in the planning of any event that seeks to bring about change," he said.

Mr Wiredu said Ghana has adopted a decentralised planning approach as the framework for promoting people-centred development.

"This new planning framework integrates social, economic, political, spatial and environmental facets of development with bottom-up structures put in place to address planning problems of communities and districts."

Many rural and urban development programmes in the past, Mr Wiredu said, did not achieve the desired effect as social, economic and physical planning were done in isolation, devoid of integration and collaboration.

"Ghana's planning framework, therefore, seeks to correct this situation in order to make planning an effective tool for development," he said.

The President of GIP, Mr Kofi Danquah Osei said even though the country's first development plan pre-dates that of a host of other countries, "Our present level of development, by all indications, remains far below those of these countries".