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Forum on national development plan
underway
Cape Coast, Sept. 26, Ghanadot/GNA – Stakeholders from
diverse sectors of the society on Friday evening began a
three-day national forum aimed at building consensus on a
long-term national development plan.
The forum, which is being held under the auspices of the
National Development Planning Commission (NDPC), will
examine prospects and constraints facing the fiscal,
financial and other services affecting the economy.
A communiqué issued by the NDPC and copied to the press
stated that the dialogue, which is under the theme:
“Financial Resources and Services for a Middle-Income
Ghana”, was intended “to provide a platform for consensus
building on two aspects of the Long-Term National
Development Plan”.
These are prospects and constraints facing the fiscal and
financial services sector, especially the banking and
monetary policy environment, and the balance of payment
trends, implications of an export-led industrialisation
policy based on modernised agriculture, and the broad policy
alternatives open to Ghana to manage its balance of
payments.
The forum follows a national symposium initiated by
President John Agyekum Kufuor on the Growth and Poverty
Reduction Strategy Two (GPRSII) held on May 9, 2006.
The NDPC said President Kufuor at that symposium “emphasised
the need to develop a set of long-term policies and
programmes for restructuring the existing fragile
agricultural economy, modernising it and supporting its
capacity to achieve accelerated growth towards attaining the
national goal of middle-income status by the year 2015”.
Since then, the NDPC has held several workshops aimed at
distilling a consensus of agreement and support for a common
set of measures and policies designed to address the
possibility of mobilising Ghana’s enormous resources to
realise the goal of transforming herself from Third World
status to Middle-Income status in the coming decade.
Topics slated for discussion include “Stability and Growth,
the Challenges of a Transforming Economy”; “The External
Economy and Balance of Payment”; “The Financial Services
Sector - A Long-Term Perspective”; “Oil Taxation and
Expenditure: A Long-Term Fiscal Policy for Ghana”; and The
Crises in Global Financial Markets”.
GNA
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