Ho, Oct. 10, GNA-The Rural Enterprises Division of the Ministry of Local Government, Rural Development and Environment (MLGRDE) on Tuesday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with eight learning centres in the Volta Region in Ho as part of government's efforts to raise incomes in the rural areas.

The centres would transfer employable skills to trainees under the Community Based Rural Industries Development Project (CBRDP) sponsored by the World Bank and the French Development Agency (AFD). Each of the enterprises would receive between 10,000 and 15,000 dollars as loans and grants for the project, which includes expansion of their facilities.

The learning centres whose businesses include agriculture and manufacturing are Tiptop Food Processing, Anloga, in the Keta District, producers of tomato puree, Enyophel, growers of mushrooms and Sokode Biscuits and Ho farms.

The rest are Eden Honey Centre at Tapa-Abotoase in the Jasikan District, Tornyeli Biscuits at Agate in the Hohoe District, Dodzi Cooperatives, Ve-Kolenu, and Evangelical Presbyterian (EP) Church, Ghana Farms.

Mr. Thomas Anang Siaw, Zonal Coordinator of the CBRDP, responsible for the Greater-Accra, Eastern and the Volta regions told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) that the programme was a poverty reduction intervention, which was expected to impact on government's aim of achieving the United Nations goal of reducing poverty among its people by half by 2015. He said the programme would inject money into the rural areas, where verifiable viable enterprises would be used to replicate skills of production among the people who would then be supported to establish ventures on their own.

Mrs. Margaret Nyavor, Rural Enterprises Development Specialist of the MLGRDE said the district assemblies would do monitoring along with Project Officers of the programme.

She said training centres were only allowed to involve in training in skills for which they had been selected and evaluated for. Mrs. Nyavor said as much as possible, monitoring officers would ensure procurements by the enterprises were done according to the procurement laws. She said beneficiary enterprises were expected to pay back all credits and warned that agreement with them could be terminated it they infringed terms agreed upon.

Mr Joseph Kweku Nayan, Deputy Volta Regional Minister said the concept of learning centres was aimed at empowering the poor through the acquisition of knowledge, skills to enhance their processing units and marketing outlets, among others.