Accra, April 16, Ghanadot/GNA
– The Ghana, will in March next year conduct
a population and housing census to determine her
population to inform development decision making.
The exercise, estimated to cost about 48.9 million dollars,
would provide demographic and
socio-economic data on all the districts to
enhance planning at all levels.
It is also expected to provide basic data for indicators on
education, national income and health, among others,
to enable policy makers to
efficiently design appropriate remedies for each sector.
Speaking at a meeting with Ghana’s development partners in
Accra on Thursday to solicit
support for the exercise, Mr Fiifi Fiavi Kwetey,
Deputy Minister in-charge of Economic Planning at the
Ministry of Finance
and Economic Planning, said the availability of quality
statistical data was a
prerequisite for development planning for quality growth.
Mr Kwetey said it was with this conviction that the
government was committed to ensuring that all logistics
needed for the 2010 exercise would
be made available for the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) to
conduct the exercise successfully.
He said government would bear half of the cost of the census
to send signals that it was
serious about the exercise and appealed to her development
partners to support and commit funds towards it.
Dr Grace Bediako, Government Statistician, said improved
technology and software would be
used for the exercise to ensure that the results
were accurate.
Dr Bediako said the GSS would engage 45,000 field personnel
to help it to conduct the
exercise.
The country’s development partners at the meeting pledged
their support for the exercise.
GNA
