The Vice-President, Mr Kwesi Amissah-Arthur, has justified the government�s decision to seek a programme with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that will provide assurances on whether or not the country is on the right path to economic recovery.
He added that the IMF could also assess the government�s policies with reference to what had worked in other countries and those that had failed.
�Whatever our criticism of the IMF, we have to acknowledge that it possesses a global view, analytical capacity and access to other information we do not possess,� Mr Amissah-Arthur said when he opened the Third Regional Ministers Conference in Wa in the Upper West Region last Wednesday.
The five-day conference, which has the theme: �Game Change for the Economy: The Role of the Regional Level in Governance,� has also brought together municipal and district chief executives in the Upper West Region.
Senchi Consensus
Mr Amissah-Arthur told the ministers that their role in the outcome of the Senchi Report would be to discuss the key ingredients that could be incorporated into their programmes to better the lives of the people.
�If all of us Ghanaians �political parties, organised labour, religious bodies and all the others who have raised legitimate concerns about the performance of the economy � would agree on the measures to be taken to support the government in implementing those measures as agreed in Senchi, we would achieve a more stable macroeconomic stability status than the three years we have suggested with the IMF,� he added.
Referring to the Programme of Action to Mitigate the Social Cost of Adjustment and Development (PAMSCAD), an economic programme introduced in the late 1980s and 1990s, the Vice-President underscored the need for the nation to discuss the kind of social safety-net interventions that could be introduced to contribute to the role PAMSCAD played then and how those interventions could be implemented now.
Mr Amissah-Arthur said the economy was going through difficulties at a time that the country was in the middle of the implementation of a major programme of administrative decentralisation with its additional costs in terms of the increase in the number of districts.
He added that there were increases in the recurrent cost at the district level, as well as the capital cost of the provision of economic, social and administrative infrastructure for the 106 new districts created in 2003, 2007 and 2012.
On that basis, the Vice-President expressed delight that one of the issues the conference would be discussing was using local economic development (LED) to change the economic paradigm of the regions and districts.
District-level election
On the district-level election slated for early next year, Mr Amissah-Arthur called on the regional ministers and district chief executives to ensure that a congenial atmosphere was created for the poll to take place.
For the fact that the election is non-partisan, he urged them to play their respective roles in ensuring a massive voter turnout in order to provide legitimacy for the local governance structures.
The Upper West Regional Minister, Alhaji Amin Amidu Sulemana, earlier in his welcome remarks, said although the region was blessed with arable land for the cultivation of many crops, it could not produce enough food as a result of the erratic rainfall pattern.
He proposed the modernisation of agricultural practices if the region was to make full use of its arable land.
He expressed concern about the poor road network in the region and stated that out of a total road network of 4,655 kilometres, only 195 kilometres had bituminous surface, adding that the region was the only one in the country without a single kilometre of asphalt road.
On educational infrastructure, Alhaji Sulemana said in the last six years, the region had witnessed massive expansion in educational infrastructure at all levels of education.
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