Alhaji Amidu Sulemana, Upper West Regional Minister has stressed the importance of using monitoring and evaluation tools to generate reliable and valid information to help Government make sound development policies.

He warned that the Regional Coordinating Council (RCC) would not hesitate to sanction any Municipal/District Assembly (MDA) that failed in its duty to prepare District Monitoring and Evaluation Plans (DMEPs) to track the implementation of their projects and programmes spelt-out in the Medium Term Development Plan (MTDP).

Alhaji Sulemana gave the warning during a two-day dissemination workshop on District Medium Term Development Plans (DMTDPs), Monitoring and Evaluation Plans and National Annual Progress Plan at Wa on Monday.

The workshop which was organised by the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC) was attended by Municipal and District Coordinating Directors, as well as their Budget and Planning Officers.

Alhaji Sulemana said the DMEPs would enable Municipal and District Assemblies to assess whether their MTDPs targets were being met and also identify their achievements and failures so that lessons could be fed into succeeding District Medium Term Development Plans (DMTDPs).

It would also provide information for effective coordination of district development at the Regional level, document lessons learned from the implementation of programmes and projects and improve on service delivery and influence allocation of resource.

Furthermore, it would demonstrate results to stakeholders as part of transparency and accountability.

Alhaji Sulemana urged the NDPC to be in constant dialogue with the practitioners and implementers of the planning system, especially the RCC to enable them to monitor, evaluate and ensure that national development goals were effectively implemented.

Mr. Bruno Dery, a Deputy Director at the NDPC explained that the 2010 Annual Progress Report (APR) was the first on the implementation of the Ghana Shared Growth and Development Agenda (GSGDA).

He noted that annually, Government and Development Partners committed significant resources to support a wide range of development interventions that were designed to improve the social and economic conditions in the country.

He said the APR provided some evidence on how government Agencies at all levels had implemented the programmes and projects under the GSGDA and whether the interventions were having the desired effect in terms of positively transforming the lives of all beneficiaries.

Mr. Dery said the objective of the workshop was therefore to disseminate the level of achievements in terms of development plans based on the GSGDA in 2010, and also to inform the districts about comments made during the review of their MTDPs by the NDPC.**