Sunyani, March 12, GNA - Mr. Ignatius Baffour-Awuah, Brong-Ahafo Regional Minister on Monday said the objective of the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy II (GPRS) was to maintain macro-economic stability in the country.

"It is also anchored on pursuing accelerated private sector growth, vigorous human resource development, good governance and civic responsibility", the Regional Minister stated.

He urged agencies charged with implementing programmes and projects under the GPRS II at the regional and district levels to demonstrate, through evidence-based information, to ensure that the interventions were having the desired effects, in transforming the lives of the beneficiaries.

The Regional Minister was speaking at the opening of a workshop on the District Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) guidelines for Regional and District Planning Co-ordinating units in Sunyani.

The five-day workshop, the first of it kind in the country, was organised by the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC) and funded by the World Bank.

Mr. Baffour-Awuah explained that the government and its development partners had committed significant resources to support a wide range of development interventions designed to improve social and economic conditions in the country.

He explained that the GPRS I that was implemented from 2002 to 2005, was a broad-based development strategy for accelerated poverty reduction and decentralisation.

The emphasis of GPRS II from 2006 to 2009 is growth inducing policies and programmes with the potential of supporting wealth creation for sustainable poverty reduction, the Regional Minister stated.

Mr. Baffour-Awuah explained that monitoring the implementation of the District Medium Term Development Plans (DMTDP) from 2006 to 2009 was a continuation of the successful and collaborative effort to develop efficient results based on the M&E system for GPRS II.

This will not only facilitate the collection, analysis and dissemination of information on performance outcomes, but would also enable the NDPC and other ministries, departments and agencies to feed the analysis from the district and regional reports directly into policy and decision making processes, he said.

The Regional Minister entreated Municipal and District Chief Executives in the region to ensure that the M&E plans were prepared and implemented.

Mr. Jonathan Azason and Mr. Opare Djan, Senior Planning Analysts from NDPC and facilitators of the workshop, explained that the workshop aimed at helping to monitor the implementation of their medium term development plans.

Mr. Djan said the monitoring would help know whether the target, objective and goals set were being achieved in the GPRS II. He reminded the participants that the planning Act 480 of 1994 gave the legal authority to NDPC to make sure that all municipal and district assemblies prepared their district medium development and M&E plans. The Planning Analyst expressed the hope that the participants would go back and use the knowledge they would acquire to prepare their district specific development plans.