UN urged to assist Ghana’s transition to middle income country
The Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, Mr Seth Terkper, has appealed to the United Nations system to assist the country in its smooth and efficient transitional agenda from a lower income to a middle income country.
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That, he said, was important so that the country was not stampeded into a status for which it was not there yet.
Addressing the first inter-ministerial meeting on Delivering as One in Ghana, a UN initiative Mr Terkper said the assistance of the UN system was key because it had the expertise in the development agenda and social elements to seek the welfare of the masses.
Delivering as One
The Delivering as One (DaO) is a UN reform initiative to fully integrate all work streams of UN activities in order to deliver more coherent and effective development assistance to programme countries.
The DaO approach is part of the ongoing efforts towards reforming the UN system, which started in 2006 based on an initiative of former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to look at ways in which the UN could become a better partner to governments and people globally.
Mr Terkper said the country was experiencing challenges since moving into the brackets of the middle income earning country, adding that already access to grants and concessionary loans had been withdrawn.
On the DaO approach, he said the government was already moving in an integrated approach in its expenditure, adding that the move by the UN system was, therefore, a complement of what the government was doing.
He was convinced that the government, in partnership with the UN system in the country, would learn from lessons from other countries that had already piloted the DaO to promote sustainable development acceptable to the country’s development agenda.
UN system working with government
The UN Resident Coordinator, Ms Ruby Sandhu-Rojon, was grateful to the government for taking the decision that the UN system in the country should adopt the DaO and urged the UN system to look at making a greater impact to support the key areas of the country.
She said basically all the areas the minister spoke on were in line with what the UN system was doing in the country, adding that “we want to be the UN system which adds value, which helps achieve the development goal for the people of Ghana”.
She pledged that the UN system would work with the Ministry of Finance, describing the meeting as a milestone to move towards deliveries.
DaO process in Ghana
Making a presentation on Global DaO process and its localisation in Ghana, Mr Wolfgang Haas, a UN Coordination Specialist, said the DaO had been piloted in eight countries since 2007 and was replicated in Ghana in 2011.
He said by November 2013, the DaO was operating in 35 countries in the areas of harmonising key elements of human resources, adding that minimising transaction cost and duplication of activities among the various agencies was paramount.
Mr Haas said in Ghana, there were 27 UN entities operating in various thematic areas in sanitation, nutrition, food security, and health, among others.
Writer’s Email: severious.dery@graphic.com.gh