Accra, Ghana//-The World Bank’s Vice President for Western and Central Africa, Ousmane Diagana who is in Ghana for his first visit since his appointment in July 2020, has called for inclusive growth as the country’s economy begins to pick up.
According to him, although Ghana’s growth is more than 4%, it should be inclusive to benefit all segments of the society especially the poor and the vulnerable.
Mr Diagana made this call at a press briefing in Accra after paying courtesy calls on the Ghana’s President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia and other key government officials as part of working visit.
Elaborating further, he said as the country’s economic picks up, its managers must put in affords to create more jobs for the youth as well as ensuring that COVID-19 vaccines are available to the people.
To this end, the World Bank Mr Diagana had committed a total of $435.8million to support Ghana government’s COVID-19 health response along five strategic pillars to help contain the pandemic in the country.
The Bank’s support to the government went into five strategic pillars. These pillars are- stop importation of COVID-19 cases; contain the spread of the virus; provide adequate care for the sick; limit the impact of the virus on social and economic life; and inspire the expansion of domestic capability and deepen self-reliance.
Commenting on the utilisation of the Bank’s COVID-19 support to the Ghanaian government, Mr Diagana, said: “We have a robust mechanism for supervising our disbursed funds for projects and programs in the country, so Ghana’s spending of COVID funds is satisfactory”.
According to him, access to safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines is a vital tool to fight the COVID-19 pandemic and strengthen global economic recovery.
To this end, Mr Diagana warned that the pandemic would not end until everyone has access to vaccines.
In Ghana, the World Bank has allocated a significant part of the financing committed (around $150m) for vaccine acquisition including 16.9million doses of Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines through the African Vaccine Acquisition Task Team (AVATT)to achieve the Africa Union (AU)’s and WHO’s target of vaccinating 70% of the total population by mid-2022.
“However, global supply shortage in COVID-19 vaccines has slowed down vaccine deployment in low-income countries. For this reason, the World Bank Group, IMF, WHO, and WTO have formed a task force to accelerate access to COVID-19 vaccines leveraging multilateral finance and trade solutions”.
They are calling for urgent international support to achieve more equitable access to vaccines and help end the pandemic.
“We are urging countries with excess vaccine supplies to release them, quickly and transparently, to developing countries.
But, to complement this, developing countries need to quickly put in place effective vaccine procurement and distribution systems”, the World Bank Country Director for Ghana, Frank Pierre Laporte said recently.
Mr Diagana is using the visit to familiarize and assess Bank’s financed projects such as the Ghana Tech Hub and Ghana Innovation Hub at the Accra Digital Center and at the Korle Bu Treatment Center.
According to the itinerary of the Regional Vice President, he will be visiting the site of the Korle Bu Treatment Center and the Accra Digital Centre today.
African Eye Report
