World Bank says it is in full support of the government’s one village one dam policy if it is going to alleviate poverty in the northern Ghana and makes the country self-sufficient in food production.
The Chief Economist for the Africa Region of the World Bank, Dr Albert G. Zeufack who said this during his first two-day working visit to Ghana, stated: “The policy is a good initiative”.
If it is implemented, it will go a long way to transform the country’s agric sector which is currently not doing well.
But he warned: “As you know we always have good plans but the implementation is always the problem”, Dr Zeufack told journalists at press conference over the weekend.
“We have seen similar projects and they are successful. Thailand is an example. It implemented similar project and its northern part and it was successful”.
Dr Zeufack who was flanked by the World Bank Country Director for Ghana, Henry G.R. Kerali, used the occasion to announce that the country would receive 1.2 billion dollars in credit from the World Bank Group within the next three years.
The credit facility, Dr Zeufack explained forms part of the World Bank’s 75 billion dollars development assistance facility to countries across the globe.
According to him, Ghana’s allocation is part of the 50 billion dollars allocation to Africa which is meant to cushion countries against the adverse economic impacts following a slow economic growth in 2016.
The facility when approved, it will be disbursed over a three year period of 400 million dollars in each tranche. While the country will have a four year grace period before repayment starts. The interest rate on the credit is 2.5 percent; payable within a twenty-five year period, Dr Zeufack added.
Touching on macroeconomic outlook for Africa, he said 2016 was the worst performance for the African region. It grew 1.6 percent in 2016 but the World Bank is projecting “a timid recovery” of 2.5 percent to 3 percent, this year, Dr Zeufack noted.
“We are projecting that Ghana may recovery from its3 percent in 2016 to 5-6 percent growth this year”, he added.
Dr Zeufack attributed the 2016 sluggish growth of the African economies to the collapsed of the commodity prices. This is because most of the countries in the African region are heavily depended on commodity exports. However, he noted optimistic that commodity prices were still going down.
He lamented that most African countries don’t build buffers when commodity prices were good. To this end, Dr Zeufack advised African countries to aggressively pursue diversification of their economies.
As he put it diversifying export and market is good area that African countries should pay serious attention to.
By Masahudu Ankiilu Kunateh, African Eye Report