Ghana's development partners, have agreed to assist the government with one billion dollars to close the overall financing gap for the 2002 fiscal year.

The amount, however, include 250 million dollars the country would receive as debt relief under the Highly Indebted Poor Country initiative. This was the outcome of the three-day consultative meeting with government officials, on Wednesday.

The World Bank Country Director for Ghana, Mr Peter Harold told a news conference that the partners readily expressed their willingness to help the government because although it inherited a very bad macroeconomic situation it had succeeded in stabilising the economy and reducing inflation.

"There is a broad agreement that the big challenge ahead is to find the way forward to stronger, more sustained, and more broad-based economic growth, including using the space created by Ghana's accessing HIPC debt relief to focus on pro-poor expenditures," he said.

"The partners share a belief in a vision for Ghana that is generating more wealth, but ensuring that the benefits of growth are distributed much more equitably," he stressed. However, Mr Harold said that a critical issue was to ensure that the development partners redeemed their pledges on time to ensure the smooth running of government programmes.

He expressed the hope that the partners would fulfil their obligations since the pledges were not contingent on government taking any broad measures or achieving certain targets before the funds were released but purely on the good economic performance that had been achieved so far.

Mr Yaw Osafo-Maafo, Minister of Finance noted that the donor community could not fulfil the development aspirations of the country and said aid was not a sufficient ground for development. To achieve sustainable development, there was the need to strengthen and to create an enabling environment to attract the private sector, he said.

Mr Osafo-Maafo assured the partners of the government's commitment to the divestiture process and explained that delays were to ensure that the right thing was done to the benefit of the country and consistent with the government's fight against corruption.

The Meeting, which was on the theme, "An Agenda for Growth and Prosperity" discussed the Economic Situation and Prospects, the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy, Decentralisation and Governance.

It also dwelt on President Kufuor's five priority development areas of infrastructure, modernised agriculture, enhanced social services, private sector and rural development and good governance. Consultative Group meetings are organised by the World Bank for developing countries to meet their development partners to discuss key policy issues.

It also affords the partners the opportunity to indicate their expected financial support. About 1.5 billion dollars in external assistance to Ghana was committed during the last meeting in Accra in 1999.