Accra, Oct. 24, GNA - Dr Samuel Nii Noi Ashong, Minister of State In-Charge of Economic Planning And Finance, on Friday said government will introduce a register to track the releases of money made to Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) as a measure of controlling and managing government expenditure.

The Minister said this when he delivered a paper on, "Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy" (GPRS) at the Ghana Armed Forces Command and Staff College in Accra

Mr Ashong said government, in addition would establish a public Expenditure Monitoring Unit to collate data on the expenditure returns from the MDAs.

He said the GPRS is a broadly accepted framework for bringing together national policies and donor support to help developing countries to make progress toward the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)

The total cost of the GPRS is estimated to be about 5,283million dollars.

Mr Ashong said poverty was most prevalent among the food crop farmers, of which many are women.

He said on the Geographic distribution, poverty incidence shows that Greater Accra has the lowest with a figure of 5 percent and the highest in the Northern Region with 69 percent, whereas the Upper east has 88 percent and the upper west with 84 percent.

The Minister said that there was also a high incidence of poverty in many regions in the south, particularly the Central Region that has a figure of 48 percent, while the Eastern has 44 percent and the Volta with 38 percent.

The GPRS includes programmes and projects for meeting the government's medium Term priority goals.

He said the GPRS would provide skills and entrepreneurial development for the youth, adding that an ad hoc committee on poverty reduction has been establish, while public sector reforms were on-going.