Accra, July 11, GNA - Participants at this year's Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences (GAAS) lectures have cast doubt on the political will to implement the strategies outlined in the Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy II Document, citing the inability of the Government and its agencies to implement simple directives.

The participants, made up mainly of academicians, non-governmental organizations and private sector and government officials also expressed concern about the inability of district assemblies to manage funds allocated to them under the District Assemblies' Common Fund (DACF). The three-day 2006 GAAS lectures are under the theme: "Addressing Poverty in National Development".

The speakers were Professor George Gyan-Baffour, a Deputy Minister of Finance and Economic Planning and Dr Regina Adutwum, Director-General of the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC). Nana Dr S.K.B. Asante, President of the Academy, chaired the event. The participants argued that the creation of slums around the Odaw River was delaying the implementation of the Odaw River Reclamation Project, and this was a serious drain on the national economy because the Government and its agencies had failed to ensure that simple rules and regulations were adhered to.

Professor Ivan Addae-Mensah, a Member of the Academy, said despite the millions of dollars pumped into the Odaw River Project, it could not go forward because the authorities had allowed slums to spring up around it.

He said it needed a political will with its attendant political implications to clear the slum called Sodom and Gomorrah. "If that money had gone to develop some rural area, the change would have been so immense."

Prof Addae-Mensah urged the authorities to make sure that policies and programmes outlined in the GPRS II were implemented to the letter as a means of effecting a comprehensive social planning programme capable of moving Ghana into the middle level income bracket.

The use of micro-finance through the district assemblies was another issue that came up with participants pointing out that the inability of Government agencies to retrieve loans granted was a serious draw back.

Prof. Gyan-Baffour said Ghanaians must change their attitude to loans given them if the country were to move forward. "The tendency where we always think that the money is Government's money and thus must not be paid back should change." He described the situation as dicey, saying if care were not taken, officials could end up jailing their own relatives, who might have taken loans and failed to pay back.

Prof. Gyan-Baffour said Ghana stood the chance of meeting the Millennium Development Goals ahead of the 2015 date on the back of an expected six per cent growth rate.

"This is against the background that poverty in Ghana is declining at an annual rate of 1.4 percentage points, meaning that the incidence of poverty will be 26 per cent or half the 1990 figure of 52 per cent by 2010."

This means the percentage of Ghanaians living below the poverty line is about 32.2 per cent, very close to the GPRS target of 32 per cent."

Prof. Gyan-Baffour said it was clear that most of the outcome indicator targets of the GPRS I were met over the period; inflation targets were virtually met; trends in interest rates were in the expected direction with international reserves accumulating as planned. "But people are crying that there is no money in their pockets," Prof. Gyan-Baffour noted and said, "the challenge is to ensure that we do not focus too much on growth to the neglect of sharing the proceeds of growth.

"Otherwise the cry will be that a few people are having too much money in their pockets at the expense of many which can segregate society into 'them and us', a precursor for social strife." Prof. Gyan-Baffour said he was happy that evidence from some districts in the Northern Regions indicated that under-five mortality rates and other health indicators were showing remarkable improvements. Reviews have shown that the decline especially in the under-five mortality rate was occurring in districts where the interventions were integrative rather than isolated activities.