The inability to ensure a stable macro-economic regime over the years has undermined workers' ability to cater for their families, Professor Bartholomew Armah, a Macro-Economist at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) said on Friday.

"Promoting the private sector and small-scale business development in a manner consistent with poverty reduction require the achievement of macro-economic stability in the first instance," he said.

Prof. Armah was speaking at a workshop organised for the Trades Union Congress (TUC) on the draft of Ghana's Poverty Reduction Strategy policy document, which will be placed before Parliament in October.

The drafting of the document, which started late in 1999, was launched last month. It is aimed at reducing poverty by 12 per cent within three years.

He said there was the need to reform the fiscal, monetary and trade policies if the country should ensure sustained growth.

To do this, Prof. Armah suggested to government to curtail excessive spending and reduce borrowing.

Agriculture, he said, would play a progressive role in achieving a modest change in macro indicators with a growth rate of about five per cent in 2004 as against 1.2 per cent in 2000.

Prof. Armah said the industrial sector was expected to increase its growth rate from the current 4.1 per cent to six per cent by 2004 when agro-processing initiatives were implemented.

He said the service sector, which has consistently enjoyed the fastest growth, would experience a slower rate in 2004 relative to 2000 as agriculture and industry take the centre stage in government's priorities. - africast/GNA Government to continue reduction of rural/urban disparities - NDPC

ACCRA, August 18 -- The National Development Planning Commission (NDPC) on Friday said the government was committed to continuing the policy intended to reduce disparities in the income and standard of living between rural and urban populations

"The government will create the enabling environment in which all sections of society can contribute to sustain and accelerate the rate of economic and social development," Mrs Angela Brown Farhat, Principal Planning Analyst of NDPC, said in Accra.

Mrs Farhat who was delivering a paper at a day's workshop on the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy (GPRS) for members of the Trades Union Congress said the area of concentration includes universal literacy and awareness of the role of science and technology in society.

The GPRS is to achieve equitable economic growth and accelerated poverty reduction within a sustained democracy with emphasis on stabilising the economy, reducing geographical gaps in poverty, including access to social services and ameliorating conditions of extreme poverty.

She said the interim poverty reduction strategy for 2000 to 2002 indicates a limited impact of Ghana Vision 2020, the previous government's blueprint for socio-economic development.

Mrs Farhat noted that the first step in laying the foundation for sustained poverty reduction led to attempts to formulate more poverty-focused policy initiatives. She said the Fourth Ghana Living Standards Survey conducted in 2000 indicated declines in poverty since early 1990s.

The overall poverty decreased between 1992 and 1999 from 51.7 to 39.5 per cent based on the upper poverty line of 900,000 cedis per adult annually while extreme poverty declined from 36.5 to 26.8 per cent based on 700,000 cedis lower poverty line.

She said the survey showed that the reduction was mainly concentrated in Accra and the forest localities. Greater Accra Region recorded the lowest incidence of poverty at five per cent while the Upper East recorded the highest of 88 per cent.

In terms of economic activity, poverty was found to be highest among food farmers with an incidence of 59 per cent.

However, she said, these encouraging figures mask incidents of growing and deepening poverty and evidence of intensification of vulnerability and exclusion among some groups and in some areas, particularly the Northern and Central regions.

Mrs Farhat said five regions recorded over 40 per cent of the population living in poverty the worst affected being the three northern regions.